Japanese Business Culture & Social Computing

June 27, 2008 at 11:09 am · Filed under Enterprise 2.0

A couple of weeks ago I was in Sapporo at the Infinity Ventures Summit (the site’s in Japanese) to talk about the role of informal networks in business and show off Trampoline’s SONAR Suite. This is the largest technology innovation conference in Japan, bringing together the leading start-ups, corporations, analysts and investors. The focus was mainly on mobile and consumer internet so Trampoline really stood out as an enterprise infrastructure provider. We were also one of just four non-Asian firms invited to present.

I’ve travelled in Japan in the past but this was my first visit in a business context. The amazing etiquette involved in exchanging business cards was the first thing that struck me. In an unstructured setting like a drinks reception in the West cards are typically swapped at the end of a conversation if there’s a likely relevance for future contact. In Japan cards are exchanged at the start of a conversation with no filter for relevance. This means you get through a lot of cards and your pockets rapidly end up bulging with other people’s.

Cards must be offered horizontally with the text in the correct orientation for the recipient, held at the corners in both hands. When you receive a card you must hold it similarly in both hands and give it your full attention for a second or two before looking up or continuing conversation. You must hold the card in front of you throughout the conversation. It’s insulting to put it in your pocket, scribble a note on it or (worst of all) hand someone a crumpled or disfigured card. If you’re sitting around a table with people the correct thing to do is lay everyone’s cards out in front of you in a neat row matching their positions around the table.

What interested me most, however, was the cultural alignment of Japanese enterprises with social computing solutions. Previously I’d assumed that Japanese business culture would be intrinsically hostile to technologies that make informal groupings and networks visible, or which lead to information being shared in new ways, since there is sensitive etiquette surrounding these processes. However my experiences in Sapporo completely changed my view of this.

The connection I’d failed to make previously is that Japanese corporations have historically placed a much higher value on the informal networks amongst their employees than their Western counterparts. Within the “shushin koyo” model of life-long relationships between employer and employee, many aspects of the individual’s social life were organised and supported by the corporation. This was seen to build organisational strength and forge links outside the formal structure (both of which are also notable drivers for social networking tools in the enterprise). During the long recession in the 1990s a lot of these extra-curricular activities were cut, but a management culture persisted in which informal networks were highly valued. On the face of it enterprise social computing tools are perfectly placed to fill this gap.

In many cases products developed for a Western market will need to be modified significantly before they are suitable for Japanese customers. This won’t simply be a case of changing language in the user interface. Behaviours around privacy management and authorisation will almost certainly need to be modified to fit different cultural nuances. But contrary to my initial assumption, Japanese corporations may prove to be early and well-informed adopters of social computing technologies.

I’m indebted to Shuji Honjo for drawing my attention to the possible like between social computing and corporate involvement in extra-curricular activities.

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Can Enterprise 2.0 fix Social Security?

June 25, 2008 at 10:00 pm · Filed under Artisanal Economy, Enterprise 2.0, Social Computing, User Revolution

Of course Enterprise 2.0 by itself won’t fix the U.S. Social Security system, which is projected to run out of money by the year 2020, but follow my logic here.

The New York Times just ran a piece on the advantages of keeping people working past what is considered “traditional” retirement age. As the article relates, there’s a lot of value to society in keeping people on the job, in both generating more tax revenues and less strain on the Social Security and Medicare system:

“The emphatic conclusion of recent research into retirement policy and labor markets is that working another two or three years would have a surprisingly powerful impact on the retirement living standards of millions of boomers and on the economy. The economic gains, according to a report published this month by the McKinsey Global Institute, a research group, would include increased household savings, higher tax collections and a reduction of the fiscal strain on Social Security and Medicare; together, that would add an estimated $13 trillion to the economy by 2025, or about a year’s total output of goods and services today.”

But, surprise, surprise, the corporate world still hasn’t gotten the message, and still clings to outdated and counter-productive prejudices about hiring employees over 50. It’s the same old story we’ve been hearing for years. In the 1980s, when I was director of the Administrative Management Society and editor of its journal, Management World, we issued countless reports and articles on the advantages of hiring and retaining “older” workers. We also spoke quite a bit about the convergence of work and life, and why work should be an ongoing source of meaning, learning, and inspiration, versus something you try to escape from as you enter your sixth decade.

But did companies listen?  Nooooo….

Let’s look at what Enterprise 2.0 and Web 2.0 could mean to the relationship between enterprises and individuals.  That is, the workplace is quickly evolving from a structured show-your-face 9-to-5 cellblock to more of an open, participate community, linked by common interests and interlocking skills. These communities are global in nature, stretching well beyond corporate cubicle environments to home offices, remote locations, and anywhere anyone is using a mobile, connected device.

The corporation is evolving into a confederation on entrepreneurs. Work and insights are delivered through Web-based communities and ad-hoc teams pulled together for specific purposes.

Now, keep following my thinking here. What difference does it make that the individual at the other end of an electronic interchange is 18 or 80? You don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. For that matter, these electronic workplace communities are oblivious to race, ethnicity, gender, and nationality (assuming you can interact in the same language). There’s opportunity for everyone with the right skills, unencumbered by biases and archaic thinking.

And companies shouldn’t fret too much about the ability of more senior workers to learn and use computer technology. As the New York Times article reports, one 64-year-old administrative assistant at S.C. Johnson kept updating her skills in budgeting, financial planning and project management programs to the point where she is a highly valued project manager. She recently designed an emergency planning Website for the company. She wants to retire in a couple of years, but her boss wants her to stick around until she’s 70.

One of the beauties of Enterprise and Web 2.0 is that these technologies break down the barriers that closed many skilled and talented individuals out of the system.

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Enterprise 2.0 … More Hierarchy or Less Hierarchy ?

June 23, 2008 at 2:47 pm · Filed under Change, Culture, Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Social Computing, Social Computing, Trust, User Revolution

By now so very much has been written and said about

1. the impacts both positive and negative of hyperlink-driven mass collaboration,
2. the vast potential for increased effectiveness related to sharing information and scaffolding knowledge, and
3. the apparent flattening of organizations that will follow. 

I have been a proponent, though I would like to point out that I have never suggested hierarchy will disappear or that it is not a necessary component for decision-making and direction in many if not most contexts.

I have been blogging for at least five years.  I consider reading comments and sometimes adding a comment of my own to be an integral part of blogging .. in fact, as often as not I learn more and get more out of the comments section than from the blog post itself.  I have also consulted to organizations for about 20 years on work design, work effectiveness, competencies and performance, knowledge management, management and leadership development, and organizational learning and change.

Euan Semple is well known for helping to create, grow and sustain the effective use of social software tools in a complex knowledge-intensive environment (the UK’s BBC).  Part of his role in doing so was to offer workshops for managers and leaders about working effectively and "managing" knowledge in that environment.  No doubt part of the effective use of such tools and processes involved people "thinking outside the box" out loud, in the semi-public exchanges between colleagues in the organizational context.

Here’s an excerpt from an anecdote he published last year titled "Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There".

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"I could never trust my staff to use these sorts of tools", he said, "they would end up wasting all of their time".

[Snip ...]

The first thing I did was to ask if he thought his recruitment policy was working for him. If he couldn’t trust his staff to make minute by minute decisions about how they spent their working days how on earth was he going to trust them to make bigger decisions on his behalf? He brushed this aside and restated that whatever his staff’s judgment the sort of activity I had been describing was still a waste of time.

To this I replied first that, contrary to his assumption, people took moments to glance at a forum or a blog and if by responding they answered a worthwhile question their answer could benefit thousands of others and save a lot of time and effort.

Secondly I responded that people have always had all sorts of ways of wasting time available to them from staring out of the window to having a coffee and if they are truly wasting time then surely it was his job as a manager to deal with them and their under-performance?

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In knowledge work environments people are always reading and talking, exchanging information and opinions, pointing to things of pertinence and related interest.  In a sense, people are already doing substantial parts of what is involved in the use of blogs and wikis … it’s just that the new tools are making it more visible and let workers capture the content for immediate or future use.  I do not think that there is much constant full-on dedication to executing a chronologically-arranged set of daily tasks (though much reengineering and embedding of work processes in the "electronic concrete" of many ERP systems in search of constant efficiency would mitigate my assertion).

So … it’s logical to assume that one of the key propositions of value to enterprises with respect to the use of blogs and wikis is the learning and the construction of pertinent knowledge that derives from the interaction and exchange of participants. 

This visible interaction and exchange is also the area that I believe raises skepticism and resistance on the part of many managers and executives.  I suspect that in many enterprises unless the tools’ use and the conversations they engender are always aligned with the mission and objectives of an enterprise or the projects / initiatives where the tools are applied,  the conversations will be seen as wasting time, or creating or supporting unwanted questioning and dissent.

I think it’s also quite possible that without effective moderation and facilitation a fair bit of the interaction and exchange of information enabled by social software inside the firewall will be cautious and measured, which can have a damping effect on the full range of the potential available when people converse on purpose about shared focus and activities.

It has often been suggested that organizational culture is or can be a significant obstacle to the effective and productive use of social software in enterprises.  I’d add managerial style and leadership philosophy (see Gary Hamel’s The Future of Management).  There is quite a bit of evidence available from the growth of wikis and blogging that publishing relevant content, commenting and the interaction that can follow facilitates increased and / or more rapid learning and idea generation.  As we become more experienced, we are learning that social computing initiatives are greatly affected by the context, purpose, boundaries and moderation styles in use for a given community.

So … I suspect that there will be wave after wave after wave of examples where enterprises begin to use blogs and wikis, don’t pay enough atention to context, purpose, boundaries and moderation,  and find that the organization’s culture and the style(s) of various managers are at odds with the dynamics of blogs and wikis.  When things seem looser or less aligned, I suspect that there will often be reversion to command-and-control, whether by tightening the ways the blogs and wikis are used or by canceling the experiment.

I also think that there are many employees in many organizations that mostly want clear direction and a clear set of tasks and objectives to be given to them by management, in exchange for a wage, decent working conditions and some possibility of some employment security.  They want hierarchy, to reduce ambiguity and possible confusion and uncertainty (Lou Gerstner of IBM once said that his toughest challenge in making substantial change work was the desire of many to "delegate upwards"). 

It takes an inspiring vision and purpose and a healthy respectful culture for most people to get excited about engaging in improvement, responsiveness and innovation.  Implementing social software towards the creation of an Enterprise 2.0 will I believe be a significant leadership and management challenge, and will often sharpen the issues for personal, management and organizational development. 

Implementation of Enterprise 2.0 initiatives will often be a major organizational change, mainly in terms of the communications and management challenges, and sharpens the game with respect to listening, empowering, coaching and responding clearly and truthfully.

Hierarchy 2.0 ?

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Tags: organizational change, hierarchy, wirearchy

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Old Media meets Social Media – KETC and the Mortgage Crisis – On the edge of launch

June 23, 2008 at 6:56 am · Filed under Barriers, KETC, Ning, Public Media, Public TV, Social Media, Social Networking, Social Objects, Subprime, TV, Trust, Trusted Space, User Revolution, Video

We are beavering away getting ready for a launch at the beginning of July.

One of the tools that we are using to enable us all to work with each other across many departments, different places and different organizations is Ning. Ning is not a traditional project management tool but we are finding it very helpful.

Soon we will have not only the project team using it but also folks from several stations, CPB and PBS and a few friends who know a lot more than old Rob about reaching the hard to reach.

I think that this is a new way of running a project – where the client and the next to go can look under the hood while we are still making the car.

In essence the work looks like this:

The Big Idea: – Our research tells us that many can save their homes but are prevented because they do not know where to go for help that they can trust. Many who can be helped are shamed and don’t want to put their hand up or are frozen. They have no one who has empathy who can help them find help.

Many cannot keep their homes. But they too are frozen with fear. This fear may well turn to resentment. Many are not directly affected but will be when many houses in their neighborhood are – at the moment they are stuck as individuals – how can they protect their own street? They need help.

The current problem – Most of the help is hard to find, finds you or is on the web. Most of it is “help” from “Vultures” or the people who “helped” get people into this mess.

What is Public TV’s great Value? – We are the most trusted organization in town.

So what then is the work? – We can’t give people money. We can’t know all the answers. But we can find the help that people can trust and we can fortify the existing networks of trust to give people the best shot of finding help that they can trust.

So I think that our work is to find the 30 – 60 “Nodes of Trust” in St Louis – those people and those organizations that have the trust of each segment and form a trusted bond with them. If we can do this, then we can do “The Work” which is I think to help people find the help.

If we can do this, we will also have found a new relationship with our city. A relationship much more meaningful than bringing quality content. A relationship where we can reveal and strengthen the fabric of community and so equip it to cope with the harsh realities of our time.

Here then is a sequence of what we may see happen – all this work is done by the brilliant Valdis Krebs.

This is where we are now – this may be how your city is – there are institutions but they are not connected and these are only the big ones. In reality there are maybe hundreds of churches, beauty salons, youth centres whatever that are Nodes Of Trust.

Here is what I think we have to do this summer – reveal and connect the key nodes. At first it will be us going out to the and then revealing them to each other and to the public.

We plan to use Google Maps to do this. We will have a layer for each community. The Bosnians will have their map. The African Americans will have their map and so on. Each push pin will have as much data as possible and we will ask the public for more Nodes.

We will connect this network to the best and most trusted help that we can find. We are now digging into what is on offer and who can help in every area. We will use our ability to tell stories in print – see a new post of the Beacon – on Video – on the web and in person.

If we are fortunate – some of these Nodes will start to connect independently of us to each other.

I think this might be all that we can do this summer.

But here is my hope. That as this network becomes more self aware and as we help it find each other – then some kind of life will emerge. Like a nuclear reaction and that we will have been present at the birth of a star:

What could St Louis be capable of – if it now looked like this?

What would be the place of a public TV station – if we could have ben the midwife attending such a birth?

What could America be like if the 300 stations in the country could have this effect in the 300 major cities of the nation?

There is a lot to play for at a time when there is a lot at stake.

Over the next 7 days I will offer up more detail as it becomes available

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Fast Forward Summit Notes: Jeff Fried on Business Transformation Powered by Search

June 22, 2008 at 11:01 am · Filed under Enterprise 2.0

Jeff Fried, the VP Product Management, at Fast led an interesting session Business Transformation Powered by Search at the recent Fast Forward Summit in Boston. He set the context by saying that the magnitude of new information has help drive the growth of Fast search. There are now 1,300,000,000 users on the web and 100,000,000 active domains. Jeff said that search can drive productivity by unlocking silos and partitioned this concept into three themes:

First, there is information discovery. You do not want to get blind sided by business competitors. The majority of Cisco.com users find their information through search. It helps customers make purchase decisions and reduces customer support costs. Cisco recently launched a big project to improve search and their top goal was to make information access more customer centric, the next theme Jeff raised.

Best Buy – a Fast client – gives credit to customer centric search for helping transform their online business. They gained market share by experiencing no down time in search on their site even in peak times. Career Builder was neck & neck with Monster.com a few years ago. Now Career Builder, a Fast customer, is well ahead by providing a better search experience for users. The Bowen Craggs survey on effectiveness of web site named Siemens, a Fast client, as number one.

Finally, operational intelligence is another goal that can be supported by effective search. Jeff said it is important to try to make search not a black box, but open and extensible. He showed this great picture of a giant needle sticking out of a hay stack and said search should be called “find.” He discussed the Merrill Lynch research library. In this enterprise case, the paradigm of a single search box does not apply. Researchers need rich filtering to be effective. This also true in pharma where Fast powers 6 of the top 10 pharma companies. These are information companies. For example, Orion needed to consolidate the many avenues to search. A typical job task used 8 different sources so Orion needed one search experience that drew on many sources. At the same, it had to go to very precise results to increase productivity of pharma researchers. Fast provided this single source.

Reuters had a traditional financial trading desk that was overly complex with dense data presentations. Now Reuters changed to a search driven experience to clean up the desk and increased productivity for their traders.

Jeff said there is a trend that enterprise search and business intelligence are converging, Unstructured and structured data world were very separate. Business intelligence world operated in structured searches and data. Enterprise search is now moving more into structured data world. I think that business intelligence also needs to look at unstructured data more and more.

Jeff provided another example, a large Australian telecommunications provider. Its customer information is their core asset but they grew into 11 different customer information data bases – billing, service, etc. These were not in synch which created a big problem. Much of data is very structured and was hard to integrate. Now they combined the data sources through search. It reduced confusion and broke down their information silos. Search can enable unique user experiences and provide the match of unique intent with content.

Jeff said there is still room for improvement. A recent Wall Street Journal article said that 49% of respondents feel finding information within the enterprise is difficult. My experience says that this is a big improvement over the past. Fast is working to make those numbers of frustrated continue to go down further.

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