A brief survey of recent Enterprise 2.0 posts (title links clickable).

…How Knowledge Must Be Applied

Colleague Bill Ives adds his own perspectives from his experience to one of my posts on his personal blog. His experiences seem to reinforce mine.

Social Media Advice for Businesses

While Bill Ives already covered this, it’s worth repeating. Former FFB colleague, Euan Semple, was filmed in a series of short pieces to share his thoughts on Social Media within the enterprise. Euan’s perspectives are always quite sound, based on his own experiences bringing Enterprise 2.0 solutions to bear. The series includes 15 segments (each, just over a minute).

It’s clearly a great reference to point others to.

Enterprise 2.0: We Got it All Wrong — a Cross-Cultural Misunderstanding

The human factor is what powers the enterprise, not the procedures.

The major question mark this piece raises for me is the concept of emergent consensus. What we haven’t figured out yet is how this will work. For E2.0 people are busy — unless you throw them all into a room together, it is not likely that they will collectively give attention to a particular issue. This still needs some study — which issues are that important that they need such a focus (which is expensive), will the relevant facts be available for a decision to be made? [the list goes on]

The Smartest Guy in the Room vs. Teamwork

Based on my experiences in the recent past I’m often left saying, “Trust? What’s that?” Because our financial mechanisms aren’t focused on such things, I’d contend that this is a huge issue that kills productivity and adds to project failure. I’d also contend that if HR wanted to really add value they’d be heavier on ‘behavioral’ consultants to bring into teams.

“Once you have been part of an Agile team it is hard, maybe impossible, to go back to a dysfunctional team. In the Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team the core foundation for TEAMing is TRUST. I assert that this issue is the same in social media, or collaborative communities online, where we must find tools and take risks to establish the trust between ourselves and our potential teammates. When the TRUST is threatened the entire TEAM is threatened.

It’s only through TRUST is the team willing to have CONFLICT. And without the ability to disagree the TEAM cannot work through difficult tasks”

Be sure to check out the diagram — it tells a phenomenal story, as well.

Enterprise 2.0 Adoption Best Practices from Yakabod

While product focused, colleague Bill Ives brings out relevant points:

“Like a number of enterprise 2.0 providers, they realize that many of the issues for a successful adoption of their offering are not technical and they have broadened their offerings to include adoption support.“

Are you listening technology providers? There’s a larger picture here that has to be addressed. I will say that I do not agree with much of what they’re recommending (perhaps that’s a post worth working on). It’s less a matter of disagreeing, but things like “They realize that you need middle management support for the initiative to be successful” is a goal but not a focus — it’s achieved by other means.

Footnotes

This seems to have turned into a bit of a Bill Ives celebration. Purely incidental — or maybe Bill just covers really relevant stuff.

I did not cover @dhinchcliff’s assessment of the E2.0 market — because it’s not about the technology — but it’s a great general reference.