by Bill Ives
July 2, 2008 at 9:13 pm
· Filed under Enterprise 2.0
We have been discussing web 2.0 versus enterprise 2.0 a bit there, (e.g., Enterprise 2.0 is not Web 2.0 nor is it an Oxymoron) so I wanted to share this addition to the conversation. I met Kevin Mullens from MIT at the Enterprise 2.0 conference. He writes the blog, A Technical Manager’s Perspective and posted some thoughts from the conference, Web 2.0 is Not Enterprise 2.0. I have been slow to catch up on all I learned at this very useful event and connect with all the people I met. Kevin provides a nice articulation of the differences. “Enterprise 2.0 is about the Business and is about providing solutions for Business. When I think of Enterprise 2.0 solutions now, I think of tools and solutions usually delivered via Web Services, with much more collaboration built into the tools and solutions.”
He goes on to say, “So what does it mean to deliver Web Services like solutions with more collaboration? I think it is different for every application. Some applications like blogs and wiki’s already have collaboration built in, however most do not, so we need to analyze were collaboration and social computing could be beneficial to the solution that we are trying to solve.”
I would add to the built-in collaboration is controlled transparency for those who need to know. The transparency starts the collaboration. Andrew McAfee’s said in an excellent session at the Fast Forward Summit, the old enterprise tolls hung on the verb “impose” and the new ones hang on the verb “emerge.” I added that with this new emergence through transparency, there is increased accountability. How that is handled may determine the success of enterprise 2.0. In the consumer web you are only accountable to yourself. In enterprise 2.0 you are accountable to the group success of your team, your company. Let’s hope that supportive managers, like supportive coaches, will help their individuals work as teams. If they try to use the transparency as a tool to simply be watchdogs and impose their rules, it will defeat the potential of enterprise 2.0. These new tools will certainly enable enhanced participation and engagement but managers will have to use them wisely. There needs to be the right balance of “impose” and “emerge.”
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Hi Bill. This is an important point. With increased transparency, comes greater risk to those without power in an enterprise. One of the best comments I heard during the Enterprise 2.0 conference was about how executives would hire McKinsey for millions of dollars to tell them stuff about their company the employees were afraid to… I’m paraphrasing, but the point is an excellent one.
Employees will really need to believe that management is sincerely interested in their POV, or it’s as ineffective as the age-old suggestion box that’s bolted on the wall of the cafeteria. The call to arms this year, in 2008-09 is what I’ve been loosely referring to as “est training for enterprise management” where liberating and tapping human potential will yield positive business outcomes.
It seems all wrong to expect management to “impose” an “emergent” culture. Just say’n.
Bill,
In one of my posts I refer to a post on the Social Glass, and Inforvark blog on the difference between how knowledgeworkers and managers will operate in an enterprise 2.0 world.
“…managers needing all the web 2.0 content data into a usable distilled format, as managers are about the “status” of work, in contrast to knowledge workers being about the “way they do” this work.”
http://libraryclips.blogsome.com/2008/03/20/km-20-is-about-showing-your-workings-out/
Also I like what McAfee said in a podcast with Kathleen Gilroy about how enterprise 2.0 will have a harder time generating a network effect, and thet there are no managers on the open web http://www.ottergroup.com/?p=574
I mentioned it in this post
http://libraryclips.blogsome.com/2007/11/28/knowledge-sharing-in-the-new-km/
“On the open web there is room for the long tail as there are enough people to make it scale, but in the enterprise the long tail is too small (there’s not enough people for there to be a long tail).
We see network effects as the aggregated value from all the individual contributions, plus the distributed discussion propagates this as well, then we can look into emerging patterns, this is the beauty of free form personal publishing, it has a greater value.
Again we come to knowledge sharing culture, people need to contribute, not just consume, otherwise we will not get the network effect. If we don’t have a fuller participative enterprise, then the social content will not manifest into great things.
In the enterprise if we have only a 1% participation rate from 10,000 people that’s only a 100 people blogging, will this generate a network effect, it may for a topic, but not the system as a whole.
In contrast on the web a 1% participation rate may be millions of people, enough scale for network effects to happen.
So it comes back to visibility and coaching, and a naturalistic approach.”
“Managers may only want contributions that are appropriate to their level on the Org chart.
They may not want someone lower to have input at the same level, or at the worst refine or overrule contributions…this is a decentralised decision environment.
…org charts will not be thrown out, the main benefit will be idea percolation, crowd sourcing, etc…this is basically a result of having bottom up knowledge sharing tools.
In comparison to the enterprise, web 2.0 and the blogosphere is an egalitarian environment, there is no org chart, even if there was, no one cares, all people are treated equal.”
Susan and John
Thanks to both of you for your excellent extensions of what I wrote. I think they are consistent with each other as you will not get the necessary participation without workers feeling that management wants to hear their POV and then will act in a supportive manner, not simply to watch over them. It was a lesson I saw in my first knowledge management implementation in the early 90s. No one wanted to use the old insurance underwriting system and make contributions because they saw it as simply a way for central office to monitor their work with no positive return to them. Then when the field underwriters were involved in creating the new system and senior management listened to what they contributed and acted on it, people became very excited and contributed much more.
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