Faster Than the Speed of Thought
by Joe McKendrick
With Enterprise 2.0, information travels faster than the speed of thought…. Geek & Poke’s Oliver Widder shows us how:
Archive for December, 2007
The Social Web – A “New World”
by Rob Paterson
Why do so many people really not get it? Why are so many institutional efforts to become expert about Web 2.0 such failures?
While working on a project for a client, I had a personal aha about this that I would like to try out on you.
I think that Web 2.0 is not just a set of tools but is more a label for a real “New World” that shares many of the characteristics of America in its more innocent years – post the Civil War. If it was just tools, any one could pick them up. No I think that Web 2.0 is a place. A world in fact that offers the same kind of opportunity and barriers that America did in 1890. Between 1870 and 1914 50 million people left everything of their old way of life to come to America. Why?
Because Europe was a place where you had to fit into your place – where the hierarchy ruled – where land was scarce – where no matter how talented you were, the system kept you in your place. You were also deeply embedded in your local society – often your entire world was bounded by your village or neighborhood. America was going to be hard work and had many risks BUT there you could be your own person, hard work could take you up in the social order, there was space and land, there were new relationships available throughout the country. There was social and absolute mobility.
So what then was the immigrant experience? If you were the grandparents – it was very hard. You might be able to learn the language and you were hard wired for the old ways. You came because your children came and they were your lifeline. For the young couple it was still a major struggle but all the incentive was present to put in the effort. If the young adults had children however – everything became easier.
A central theme of the immigrant story was the kids. They picked up the new language, culture and ethos very quickly. There were the advisors to their parents and grandparents.
So I am wondering might be the process for adopting the new Web. Of course there are exceptions – I am nearly 60 and am very comfortable in this new world – I bet there are some young who hate it. But generally, the kids, like the immigrant kids from Eastern Europe in New York in 1890, have no problems and can be a huge resource.
Many at the top of large institutions are like Grandparents. Some junior executives are like the core immigrant. So long as there are no kids involved, the Grandparents are going to make the call. I think the key is to give the kids a lot of power – in institutions that means access to key people and to key processes.
This summer at KETC, the interns, whose historic role has been to make and serve coffee, came into their own. I saw them showing the “old farts “how easy this tool or that one was to use. Or as to why we had to use You Tube or Facebook – because “everybody” was using them. The “Old farts” rather enjoyed being taught by the young – they were much less threatened and could be awkward and vulnerable. The power system had not been turned upside down, but the kids had access to the power people and to the power meetings where they had a say.
It was such fun to attend a meeting of the senior folks and watch them all ears as a 22 year old journalism student took the floor and held them spell bound as she used her own experience and knowledge to shift the group to take the decision.
It was just as it must have been in the immigrant tenements, where the kids became Americans first and helped their families cope and become Americans themselves.
My bet is that the secret ingredient for any organization that is serious about moving from the Old World to the New, will stack the deck with the young and give them a key role to play.
Enterprise 2.0 and Blue Ocean Strategy
by Sean McClowry
In 2004, two professors from INSEAD, W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne published an article in the Harvard Business Review, introducing the concept of “Blue Ocean Strategy”. A number of articles soon followed and a book was published in 2005. This approach has quickly become one of today’s more influential works on business strategy and the book has published over a million copies.
Blue Ocean Strategy is about creating new markets through the introduction of new products. The reference to “Blue Ocean” comes from the authors’ use of a metaphor of markets as oceans. They claim that most organsiations compete in Red Oceans, with essentially the same products against a shared core customer base. In this model, companies focus all their time and energy competing with each another: products become commodities and victories are pyrrhic. With all this fighting, the marketplace is bloody – a Red Ocean.
Blue Oceans are about creating product offerings that are so fundamentally different, they create a new market. The competitor is innovation, not a similar company. As is shown in the book, companies that have created Blue Oceans have been the big winners in the 20th century and the authors believe this trend with continue. Examples include Henry Ford with the automobile and Southwest Airlines with budget travel. Most case studies from the authors are not technology companies or even new companies.
The authors provide plenty of case studies that show that creating a Blue Ocean is not necessarily about technology. That said, I believe it is becoming increasingly difficult for an existing organisation to be innovative without good technology or at least simple technology – especially large companies. This is because their legacy systems are so complex and difficult to manage and their products so tied to this infrastructure that thinking beyond the current-state is extremely difficult.
Implementing systems based on Enterprise 2.0 principles of agility, collaboration and simplicity enables a much better way to innovate. It’s long journey for big company, but worth starting now. And sailing on the Blue Ocean gets a lot easier without a bunch of leaky boats.
Circular Progress in Social Media?
by Bill Ives
I really liked Rob Paterson’s post, History of Social Media, as well as the earlier one on More on War as the Accelerant for Social Software, where he also looked at some of the historical aspects of social media. Trains and planes have transformed how people connect and transformed the world as a result. However, the history of connections and social media is often one step forward and one step backward. Many of the early forms of connecting were more social than some of the stuff that replaced them.
In the late 1890s my great aunt liked to listen to music but the only place that you could hear music was the saloon in her newly-organized town in the Oklahoma Territory. In her day, this place was not appropriate for young single women. Fortunately, she was the first telephone operator in the town. So she called the saloon and left the line open, getting “piped in” background music, while she worked, whenever the band played. There was an added benefit to this technology. She was able to also hear whenever a fight broke out in the saloon, a frequent activity, and notify the local police by running a flag up a pole at the telephone office across from the police station. These features, piped-in music and location monitoring, have taken on new forms and become disaggregated from her primitive phone lines.
There were other added social aspects to this early social media. My great aunt operated a system of 64 phone lines. She became known in town as the “hello girl.” She was also at the center of social connections so people called her or stopped by when they wanted to find someone or find out what was really going on in town. As mentioned, above, she could leave lines open. In addition to getting music from the saloon, she also kept an open line to her fiancée who worked at the bank. They could talk between tasks during the day, facilitating their courtship.
We lost a lot of this social nature by taking people out of the connections but the web is bringing it back in new ways. The other day, I listened to a live digital feed of Cajun music from one of my favorite music bars, Tipitina’s in New Orleans, while I blogged in Boston. So it has come full circle from my great aunt but now I can get music from many places besides the local saloon. Happy new year everyone. I will pick up this thread in 08.
Facilitating Networking
by Paula Thornton
This is in response to a comment from my colleague, Bill Ives, who asked for my thoughts as to the potential shakeout of social networking tools in the Enterprise. Bill has previously reported both on a major software developer, Serena, which has adopted Facebook to REPLACE their intranet (supporting 800 employees — the numbers can matter here) and WorkBook.
There are a number of factors at play here. Which of these are most relevant, depends on the circumstances.
1. Size/Effort/Culture
These are so closely tied together it’s hard to unravel them from one another. The success of social networking technologies depends on adoption and buy-in. The culture of 800 employees can be far more readily influenced, as a collective – particularly when replacing an intranet in total — than situations with the following:
- Thousands of employees. Likelihood of a ‘cohesive’ culture diminishes and increases the effort to implement/adopt, unless it fills a void, or replaces and enhances the value of something already in use (e.g. the results of a people lookup).
- A technology culture with security phobias. Many enterprises would never consider the Facebook path Serena embraced, simply because of firewall/security policies (based on sound rationale or not).
- A social culture that may have pre-conceived notions that the technologies might be non-productive, threatening, or fill-in-the-blank-challenge (we’ve seen this with all 2.0 technologies — because of the perceived ‘control’ factor). This list would also include outright apathy (which is fairly significant in many cultures, both on the ‘permission’ and the adoption side).
2. Degree of Interconnectivity
You can’t really use the term ‘online’ any more to cover all aspects of being ‘connected’. Regardless of device or means of interaction, the value of social networking goes up the more resources are enabled to contact and interact with one another. There are many business models that provide limited means for employees to connect to the company, let alone one another. For a technology company like Serena, nearly everyone is likely ‘connected’ to do their work. But being connected isn’t the same as being interconnected.
Using a computer for mostly ‘offline’ activities (stand-alone applications), is not the same as doing ’shared’ work that is constantly showing updates, where individuals are connected to the ‘pulse’ of the business and can ’see’ exchanges of activities going on. The further away an employee is from a ‘live’ pulse of the company, the less likely a social networking technology will add value, unless it is being leveraged in an intentional effort to connect employees. Connecting people to have conversations and/or debates when they have limited facts is counterproductive.
Many companies are not strategically leveraging their intranets as ‘the face of work’ within their organizations. Employees go there on a ‘have to’ or ‘as needed’ basis. Such environments can reinvent themselves either by replacing or adding a social networking dimension, but then, this was often the justification for many companies implementing portals (aka. collaboration). Such strategies have to be brought together — they’re pieces of the same story (or should be).
3. Interface Saturation
We’ve lived a long history where every application has its own interface. Even though internet browsers brought some degree of continuity to an online experience, its influence over the total experience is limited. Adding another interface is not the goal here; adding a capability is. Exactly how would employees’ ability to network among themselves be increased?
Serena was on the right track replacing their intranet for Facebook because:
- They weren’t competing against themselves for attention, or asking employees to choose an allegiance (what’s set as your ‘home’ page at work?)
- They enhanced Facebook to better meet their own needs (expanding its purpose reinforced their commitment to it)
- [There are a lot more...add yours.]
What about something like Worklight’s WorkBook? My first question would be, what will it replace and/or what will it bring together? Then, how is it different than anything else already in place that offers access to friends, news, groups, or applications, including email? If I can look up the current status of my colleagues today in Outlook, or grab their phone number, why wouldn’t I expect the same interface to give me direct access to ‘more’ about that individual? Or, how will the social networking solution ‘play’ with the conversations already going on via email? How will it replace or divert email exchanges?
Why do I need to have all these competing interfaces asking for my attention, diverting me from my work? Remind me again, what was I doing?
STEP AWAY FROM THE INTERFACE. What are the functions being delivered and how do they fit with all other existing functions?
Let me simply ask companies some very serious questions.
- Social networking is not a technology, although the label can be used to identify unique technology solutions. What do you know about how employees are already interacting with each other (IM, email, phone, text messaging, etc.)?
- How would a ‘new’ function/interface enhance existing social networking and what specific value would/should it add?
- What role does social networking already play to contribute to increased productivity? Where does the ability to connect to one another break down and how does this impact productivity? Will a new technology address this?
- Where does corporate/enterprise social networking end and industry social networking begin? [I existed before I joined my current employer and will exist afterward...my identity is not unique to my employer. My incentive is not to maintain my corporate identity but my industry identity, which may be separate from my alter-ego
]
If you don’t know, you’ve got bigger issues to deal with than making decisions about social networking technology.
And yes, some 2.0 junkies might insist that it should just evolve. There should be an element of evolution balanced with insightful decision. Evolution has a premise: survival of the fittest. ‘Fit’ is not something that happens randomly. Evolution is not equal to random. There are already far too many careful, restricted decisions made that are still quite random (e.g. forced by process, culture, power, naivety, time constraints and combinations thereof).
P.S. To put the value of my opinion in perspective, I advised my husband in the late ’90s that ERPs were not a good stock investment — they ended up being the high-flyers of the market at that time. The problem was that I tied my opinion of the technologies (their lack of robustness/completeness, and/or solid design) to their market potential. I failed to factor in the absence of alternatives to address a serious ‘perceived’ problem at hand. I also failed to adjust for the afore-mentioned randomness factors that drive major technology contracts – not tied to outcome.
