Archive for May, 2008
by Jon Husband
May 29, 2008 at 10:08 am · Filed under
2.0 Design Thinking, Change, Emergent, Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Social Computing, Social Computing, Trust, User Revolution, Web 2.0
Those who have read some of my posts in the past will know that I tend to drone on and on about what I believe is an emerging organizing principle I call wirearchy:
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A dynamic two-way flow of power and authority based on knowledge, trust, credibility and a focus on results,
enabled by interconnected people and technology
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In his most recent blog post, Andrew McAfee of Enterprise 2.0 fame notes he’s been invited to a heavy-hitter discourse on "the Grand Challenges for 21st century management" and outlines in the blog post a key point he intends to bring up.
It has everything to do with the current methods of work design (and organizational architecture) used by most organizations today, which are derived from FW Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management (see my previous post on this issue). The methods in use today did not foresee the advent of the web nor the extensive (okay let’s say nearly ubiquitous now) use of hyperlinks and various emergent forms of (trying to manage) flows of information.
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What I Said about the Revolution
[ Snip ... ]
Impediment or design flaw: People and Information are Deeply Mismatched in Most Organizations
Within most organizations at present, the great majority of consultable digital information is either highly structured (customer order records stored in a database), a reflection of the viewpoints and priorities of the formal hierarchy (newsletters), and/or static (document repositories). As a result, this consultable information does not show the current state of the organization as perceived by its members, nor does it accurately represent their views, skills, judgments, experiences, activities, etc.
In fact, it is striking how few opportunities people have to generate, modify, and share information freely and widely on the Intranet, especially when compared with their abilities to do the same on the Internet. Since so many organizations describe people as their most important assets, it is puzzling why these opportunities are so constrained.
These constraints have an important consequence: while most organizations are drowning in many kinds of data they are simultaneously starved for vitally important information—information that comes over time from ‘wetware,’ or the minds of involved people. Lack of access to this information leads to sluggishness, redundancy, inferior decisions, and missed opportunities.
Radical Remedy: Create an Emergent, Social Enterprise Information Environment
An organization should deploy a universal digital environment that lets members contribute and modify content in a ‘freeform’ manner—with a minimum of imposed structure in the form of workflows, decision right allocations, interdependencies, and data formats specified ex ante. This environment should contain mechanisms to let structure emerge over time; such mechanisms include linking, tagging, voting, rating, and trading, as well as algorithms that generate recommendations, assess relative popularity, etc.
Managers’ roles in this environment are to set expectations, guide the development of healthy norms, indicate appropriate uses, and lead by example. A managers most fundamental role here, however, is to ‘get out of the way’—to stop using technology to impose constraints and culture on people and their work, and to instead encourage the appearance of an emergent structure.
This remedy does not necessarily include the transfer of any decision rights beyond those related to content creation. In other words, this remedy does not advocate that decisions related to the running of the organization be turned over to any emergent collective. It simply entails the creation of a novel information environment.
Decision makers will hopefully consult this environment, but the environment does not become the decision maker.
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I’ve shared with Andrew my thoughts regarding work design and the arcane discipline of job evaluation (NOT the evaluation of performance in a job), but have yet to hear back from him despite his stated interest in the issue.
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Tags: hierarchy, wirearchy, work design, organizational architecture
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by Bill Ives
May 28, 2008 at 4:55 pm · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
Scientific American recently ran an article, Science 2.0 — Is Open Access Science the Future? Is posting raw results online, for all to see, a great tool or a great risk? It seems we will never run out of 2.0 topics but I think this one is a good thing. In a prior life I was a researcher in cognitive psychology and had to deal with the maze of information and many personal networks that have only grown since then. I recently spoke with Laura Butcher, Executive Director at the Hershey Center for Applied Research, where they are implementing this concept through their KnowledgeMesh™ platform.
Laura mentioned that, “The HCAR KnowledgeMesh will facilitate quality interactions between industry, academia, government, investors, workforce and support organizations that are located around the globe. Through the HCAR KnowledgeMesh, the research park will operate as a concierge to these critical business services and research resources thereby accelerating the growth and success of our resident and partner organizations.” The HCAR KnowledgeMesh was developed by Intelmarx, a software company that supports non-profit organizations and higher education institutions.
The Hershey Center for Applied Research (HCAR) is a non-profit research park that offers facilities and business and research resources. In addition to its wet and dry lab facilities and office space in a campus-like setting in Hershey, PA, HCAR provides access to research expertise, especially in the areas of research discovery, development and commercialization, as well as access to the nearby Penn State Medical Center and College of Medicine. The research areas include: life sciences, nanotechnology, “green” technologies, IT, and light manufacturing. Laura said they want to provide a nexus for innovation. The life sciences field is one area where enterprise 2.0 is catching on. More than half of life sciences executives (52%) have implemented enterprise 2.0 technology somewhere in their organization (AMR Research). The initial functionality of KnowledgeMesh includes support for on-line communities, ability to set up profiles for individuals and organizations, blogs, wikis, tagging, podcasts, search.
There is also the ability to create sub-communities that are either open or closed. Laura said they are looking to the membership for additional features. The KnowledgeMesh had only been up about a week when we talked. Laura was very pleased with large number of people setting up profiles so far. HCAR KnowledgeMesh also has a file repository for individual members. They can upload their resume, CV, photos, research papers and more. They can use the repository to share work with friends or use it as a virtual hard drive to store their information for access anywhere.
Returning to the Scientific American article, it comments, “A small but growing number of researchers (and not just the younger ones) have begun to carry out their work via the wide-open tools of Web 2.0. And although their efforts are still too scattered to be called a movement—yet—their experiences to date suggest that this kind of Web-based “Science 2.0” is not only more collegial than traditional science but considerably more productive.” Perhaps science can catch up to business here or they can learn from each other. Gartner appears to agree with Scientific American.
by Jon Husband
May 27, 2008 at 3:10 pm · Filed under
2.0 Design Thinking, Blogging, Change, Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Social Computing, Enterprise Software, IT Department, Social Computing, User Revolution, Web 2.0
Today I noticed this piece in Canada’s national newspaper, the Globe and Mail, announcing that Open Text has just signed a 7-year contract to lay "the foundation for the government’s 2.0 strategy".
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Open Text strikes Web 2.0 deal with Ottawa
MATT HARTLEY
The Canadian government is getting a Web 2.0 upgrade.
Waterloo, Ont.-based business software maker Open Text Corp. [OTC-T] announced Tuesday it has landed a seven-year maintenance contract with the federal government to supply the tools that will “provide the foundation for the government’s 2.0 strategy.”
Open Text said the agreement will see its software used in all federal departments, agencies and crown corporations helping to create internal wikis, forums and blogs to help the government be more responsive to Canadians.
Open Text, which became Canada’s largest software company when International Business Machines Corp. purchased Ottawa-based Cognos Inc. last year, produces “enterprise content management software” that helps businesses to store, organize and analyze records and documents.
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Perhaps I’m mistaken, I can’t help but think that this will be the knowledge-worker equivalent of acquiring and implementing a large ERP system which will require enormous amounts of training so that everyone uses the tools in the same way, so that they push and pull content to and from each other in the same ways. Will it become a new form of email for use internally ?
From what I have been able to understand about using social software to carry out social computing inside the firewall, this approach (or my interpretation of it) flies in the face of much of what we have learned about social computing. I strongly suspect that different government departments of varying size and scope will carry out different kinds of knowledge work, and have different requirements for when and how to use collaboration to develop policy and deliver services. However, I am sure that there will have been consultant studies and recommendations backing this decision.
I think it might be better to consider a 2.0 strategy that takes into consideration those different requirements and look at a range of possible solutions, with the intention of acquiring and implementing that which will work best. After all, many of the 2.0 collaboration platforms can co-exist nicely with existing information technology architecture and what differentiates with respect to effectiveness is the take-up and use of the 2.0 capabilities by the end-user.
My sketchy opinion notwithstanding, it may be the case that such issues have been considered will be addressed with the Open Text solution. Open Text has been a leader in the collaboration space for some time now, and my thinly-informed interpretation of a short newspaper article does not have the benefit of the details of the Canadian government’s 2.0 strategy.
But my knowledge of the structure and dynamics of the work of government departments (I have consulted to a number of them in the past) suggests to me that there will be many procedural binders and lots of day-long training sessions trying to help workers become familiar with the new tools and which categories to use for which piece of content, etc.
I believe that control is still a very important consideration, if not the primary factor, in the design of work in government departments.
It will be interesting to check in 3 or 4 years down the road and see how things are going. Nothing would be more pleasing than to discover that my country’s government is reaping the benefits of using social computing inside its firewalls.
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by Joe McKendrick
May 26, 2008 at 11:09 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
I’ve dedicated my whole career trying to elevate and deliver information above the noise, so Robert Scoble’s recent post on the value of tuning into the “noise” itself gave me reason for pause.
“I’m a noise junkie. I used to be a news junkie, but I’ve hung out with the world’s top journalists enough now to see that the good ones are noise junkies. They are the types that head into a crowded party and listen to pitch after pitch (noise) and drunken story after drunken story (noise) to find something that their audiences will find interesting (news)…. Last year I got a tour of the Wall Street Journal’s West Coast printing plant. They print 60,000 copies an hour. At the end of the tour the head pressman said ‘I’ve been reading this six hours before you did for more than 15 years now and it hasn’t helped yet.’ Why? Cause the news isn’t where the action is: the high value bits are stuck in the noise.”
He’s on to something here. Wall Street wizards have been tuned to the “noise” since the creation of the Stock Market. It’s also something intelligence agencies have known for years and have practiced. In World War II, for example, British and American intelligence analysts tracked regional newspaper articles coming out of Germany, not for the face value of the news itself (which was propagandized), but to conduct content analysis. Piecing together reports of lines at stores, factory closings, and casualty lists helped weave a picture of what was happening on the other side.
Likewise, in recent years, you may have heard in the news intelligence analysts track and perform content analysis on the “chatter” that takes place between suspected terrorists and their sympathizers over email, telephone, and the Web. On a more local level, police departments fight crime by keeping their ears to the ground to get a feel for what’s happening and what’s being said on “the street.”
So, as Scoble puts it, the tools we have out our disposal these days — Twitter, Friendfeed, Facebook, MySpace, et al, deliver information long before the “official” sources get a hold of it.
The role of enterprise search, in fact, seeks to help pull nuggets of valuable information from the noise of text, relational data, graphics, and all sorts of other data and files flooding our organizations.
Scoble goes on to put it this way:
“I like the noise. Why? Because I can see patterns before anyone else. I saw the Chinese earthquake happening 45 minutes before Google News reported it. Why? Because I was watching the noise, not the news.”
Our colleague right here, Rob Paterson, in fact, picked up upon this point in recent posts, noting that word of the China earthquake, as well as a rumbler in Virginia, was spreading across the Twitterverse almost real time. Plus, he notes how a corporate entity — H&R Block — is employing Twitter to listen to the “noise” to improve customer relationships.
So, it can be concluded that if you’re listening to the “noise” these days, it’s telling you that people are starting to listen to the noise.
But will there always be an informal, unstructured aspect to such analysis. Can these methodologies be institutionalized and made enterprise ready? Going to parties and gathering intel by listening to drunken stories is something that will never make its way into formal corporate processes. This is the old knowledge management conundrum — how can you capture and bottle informal, unstructured data? How do you capture serendipity — someone runs into a business colleague at an event, and learns that so-and-so is leaving because the company pulled support for a project? How do you take it out of peoples’ heads and digitize it?
Technology is helping to surface some of this serendipity — and pull nuggets from the noise. But some analysts still wonder if consumerish services such as Twitter are quite ready for the enterprise. Enterprise Irregular Dennis Howlett, for one, says Twitter appears squeamish about getting involved in legal tussles, even when it comes to enforcing its own terms of service. This doesn’t go over too well in building confidence in corporate settings, Dennis added. “Will enterprise trust a service that turns its back on the very community it seeks to foster? The answer to that is a resounding no.” In a previous post, Dennis also questioned whether Twitter’s infrastructure is ready to scale as it needs to meet burgeoning demand.
by Rob Paterson
May 26, 2008 at 5:27 am · Filed under
Politics, Social Computing, Social Media, Social Networking
Roger Cohen writes today in the Times about the cultural split between a world view that is all about division and one that is about connectivity.
Surely this is the heart of the 2.0 adoption cycle for anyone or any organization. Is it all about “me” and my tribe or is it about “us” and how we fit into the larger world and affect each other?
My sense is that what ever your politics “Me” or “Us” is the great divide.
So how do we get from “Me” to “Us”? Maybe results will help many decide:
This cultural failure has been devastating for Clinton. As Joshua Green chronicles in an important piece in The Atlantic, Obama has used social networking and his user-friendly Web site to develop the money machine, and the youthful engagement, that has swept him forward.
Green notes, “Obama’s claim of 1,276,000 donors is so large that Clinton doesn’t bother to compete.” He gives some other Obama campaign numbers: 750,000 active volunteers and 8,000 affinity groups. In February, a month in which he raised $55 million ($45 million over the Internet), 94 percent of donations were of $200 or less, a number dwarfing small contributions to Clinton and John McCain.
Obama has been a classic Internet-start up, a movement spreading with viral intensity and propelled by some of Silicon Valley’s most creative minds. As with any online phenomenon, he has jumped national borders, stirring as much buzz in Berlin as he does back home.
If you choose the “Me” you cannot compete with another who chooses “Us”. Also if you choose me – you miss the point that the larger world cares about you:
Her most crippling blindness has been to networks, national and global, the threads that bind and have changed society. As David Singh Grewal writes in his excellent new book, “Network Power,” a core tension in the world is that: “Everything is being globalized except politics.”
Grewal continues: “We live in a world in which our relations of sociability — our commerce, culture, ideas, manners — are increasingly shared, coordinated by newly global conversations in these domains, but in which our politics remains inescapably national, centered in the nation states that are the only loci of sovereign decision making.”
The Bush administration has accentuated global awareness of this disjuncture. Connected people around the world were appalled by Bush policies — from the trashing of habeas corpus to renditions — but felt powerless to influence them.
The overwhelming global interest in the current U.S. election is tied in part to a spreading belief that America’s leader may be as important to French lives, for example, as the incumbent in the Élysée Palace.
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