by Paula Thornton
April 4, 2007 at 12:35 am
· Filed under Enterprise 2.0
Recent posts have spoken of challenges to Enterprise 2.0. The dissenters seem to mistakenly assume that Enterprise 2.0 is a technology play. This reflects a common mind-set, um, among technologists — they forget about the people and process portions of the solution triad. Certainly there are technological components, but they are simply enablers. Optimizing the potential rests with the people and process dimensions.
Even one of my respected colleagues seems to miss this point when he suggests that “it is vital for intranets to innovate“. Just as Jared Spool correctly argues that interfaces cannot intuit, intranets cannot innovate. Innovation is a human ability, not a technical one. Technologies can be deemed ‘innovative’, but do not innovate.
Enterprise 2.0 provides necessary but insufficient means by which to facilitate the potential of individuals to innovate. The potential can easily surpass Knowledge Management initiatives, which were doomed by edict as a misnomer. There is no value in managing knowledge, an intert collection of bytes. The value is in facilitating human potential.
Leveraged correctly, this is an opportunity to identify and crush limitations/barriers to human potential. When considering the process dimension, focus on the original premises of BPR (to obliterate non-value adding work, rather than using technology for automating it) and challenge defined process and methods seeking for focused simplicity. The goal is to mechanize the work, not the worker. But to recognize that the greatest value humans contribute is in managing varability. Automate the fixed dimensions and facilitate for variability.
Critical to such efforts is a fundamental premise: innovation is fueled by design thinking. If Enterprise 2.0 is left to the practices of IT, it will fail. Where many IT floors are often more culturally diverse than the rest of the organization, they often lack true intellectual diversity. That’s not to say that the staff do not have diverse intellectual potential, but that typically such potential is restrained by methods and operating cultures. I have found truly creative technology people who ‘change their identify’ when they go to work, as a survival tactic.
I suggest that it is not Enterprise 2.0 that is threatened by this renaissance, it is the survival of the current IT model that is in question.
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Richard Luecke and Ralph Katz wrote a great book on innovation. Managing Creativity and Innovation (Harvard Business School Press. ISBN 1591391121.) discusses in length innovation in organizations. They wrote:
“Innovation . . . is generally understood as the introduction of a new thing or method . . . Innovation is the embodiment, combination, or synthesis of knowledge in original, relevant, valued new products, processes, or services. (p. 2)”
Among the most important things they discuss is that innovation, like all other things that we do, “is a management process that requires specific tools, rules, and discipline.” (p. xvii)
If we ever hope to ensure that we are innovative, we can’t rely on automatic processes to provide that innovation. We need to make sure that we always allow the creative juices flow.
Thanks for that observation Corey. What I’ve discovered of late adds to that perspective. Let me share a specific example. The comment I made about variability came from a conversation with a PhD candidate colleague. He suggested how a continuum he had culled from a Drucker perspective worked really well for differentiating work. At one end of the continuum was the knowledge worker at the other end was highly mechanized work. He shared how in a course exercise, students could readily place specific roles on the continuum. The example he gave was a UPS Driver. I challenged him. I suggested that this was only because they had a limited perspective of the potential of the UPS Driver to be a knowledge worker.
I asked him if he was aware that all FedEX truck drivers were owner/operators? I told him how they were free to optimize their own routes. I challenged him to rethink ‘mechanized’. If mechanized jobs are so simple, why use a human at all? Because they can manage variability. But are there not repetitive tasks that can be both process optimized and allow for variabilty? Consider the FedEX driver. He would love a system to take all of his deliveries and map them out in the most efficient route possible. Efficiency saves him costs. But does he also want to be free to decide to return to an important account to take care of a special ‘last minute’ large delivery to increase equity in that relationship? You bet!
Innovation is not about avoiding automatic processes, but about leveraging them to free us up to manage more and more variability. It’s a matter of both…yin and yang, chaos and order. The greatest potential is in the moving middle.
Paula,
Great point. I must admit I’m guilty of getting too caught up in the technology side of Enterprise 2.0, but you’re right, this is definitely more about people and culture than anything.
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