by Jim McGee
September 9, 2009 at 8:38 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
Daniel Pink, author of the excellent Free Agent Nation and A Whole New Mind, has a new book coming out in December. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us takes a look at the evidence about the links between incentives and creative, knowledge work. Recently, he spoke about his work at a TED talk in England:
Link to Daniel Pink’s TED Talk Video
If you’ve been paying any attention at all, his conclusions should come as little surprise. This is simply one more brick in the growing wall of evidence that the fiction of “rational economic man” has long outlived whatever utility it might have had. The evidence boils down to this; if you need creative and original thought out of people, economic incentives don’t work. Creative work comes from internal, self-motivation and requires autonomy, mastery, and purpose.
This is not news. The question that is interesting is whether organizational leaders have finally reached the point where they are prepared to act on this knowledge. If what your organization needs is creative, mindful, independent thought from all quarters and you must finally abandon the pretense that you can elicit that behavior with specific, concrete incentives, then how much harder has your leadership task become? If, to use Pink’s phrase, “sharper sticks and sweeter carrots” won’t work, what will?
The answer comes down to leadership. More specifically, it comes down to the kind of leadership exemplified by Bill Russell of the Boston Celtics. For Russell, leadership was about getting the best out of each of the players on the team more than it was about getting the best out of himself.
by Bill Ives
September 8, 2009 at 7:59 pm · Filed under
Event Announcements
Last week I posted on whether Twitter is Like: Stopping at the Water Cooler? Going Out for a Smoke? Taking a Nap? The core concept is taking a break but each has different social connections. One study found that workers are more productive if allowed to use the internet for leisure in moderation at work (see Freedom to surf). Another found that water cooler discussions increase productivity (see Learning to be Productive at the Water Cooler). Twitter can act like a virtual water cooler. Arie Goldshlager tipped me off to both of them through Twitter. Then in response to the water cooler study tweet, Gil Yehuda used Twitter talk about the social networking that goes on in smoker breaks.
The taking a break concept reminded of a study reported by the BCC, sleeping on the job, that found “Some 30% of people have their best ideas in bed compared to just 11% who have them at their desk, according to research by the East of England Development Agency (EEDA). It is calling for companies to install beds in the workplace, in an attempt to change the way we work for the better. According to the authors of The Art of Napping at Work we live a “napaphobic culture”, but attitudes are changing and the bed could soon become part of the office furniture. Bill and Camille Anthony say workers are “nap ready” and often sneak a snooze anyway.”
We also have a “socialmediaphobic” culture in some companies as they spend millions to block access. However, like napping, the attitudes are changing. In this case even faster I would imagine. For example, one study found that eight in 10 senior management, human resource and marketing executives believe social media can enhance relationships with customers/clients (81%) and build brand reputation (81%). So Twitter and other web surfacing can work like naps, except that you might gain some useful information while zoning out if you do it right and perhaps even enhance customer relations. I get a lot of great ideas when I take a nap. I also get great ideas from Twitter. Sometimes the two work together as I realize the significance of what I read on Twitter while taking a nap. Twit on.
by Paula Thornton
September 8, 2009 at 4:59 pm · Filed under
Dead Paradigms, Enterprise 2.0
Are there people who are perfectly willing to talk about potential change that business needs to go through, until it impacts them directly, or fundamentally challenges the basis of activities their career is founded upon? In the 2.0 economy we repeatedly find examples of what happens when a business tries to ‘control’ conversations. In the interest of giving ‘place’ to a conversation that was shut down just as it started, I bring attention to it here.
People comfortable in a pre-2.0 era mindset appear to be uncomfortable with conversations that challenge the status quo. Heck, while I don’t necessarily agree with his approach, it was clear that many of us agreed with some of the rants that Dennis Howlett recently lodged against Enterprise 2.0 (and for which he sent out a tease today of more to come). Conversations such as these are critical. We must relish talking through the issues and making sure that we’re not just a bunch of bobbleheads not sure what we’re agreeing to and not willing to challenge everything that we embrace as assumptions (including the ways we’ve been used to doing business).
One of the principles that we support is that conversations need to be allowed to work themselves out — they need to be self-policing (with allowance for community ‘regulation’ — the level of ‘control’ that everyone agrees to). This is based on a reality that ‘flaming’ behaviors actually have a tenancy to burn themselves out (individuals are not taken seriously). In many cases, what is perceived as flaming is often mistaken passion and outright wrong conclusions being jumped to (we’ve all seen how quickly that can happen on Twitter due to limited context). Assuming that a blog post is not intended to initiate conversation, is clearly pre-2.0 thinking. Putting an end to conversation does not add to the understanding, nor does it allow for individuals to exercise their own ability to grow in the skills of ‘agreeing to disagree’.
Indeed, enabling such conversations to take place is fundamental to the entire 2.0 paradigm. So many times there are individuals who talk about making sure we spend more time in ‘live’ interaction. Clearly a balance in all things is relevant. But I’m beginning to suspect that we’ve suppressed our conversations for so long that we’re not really good at knowing how to have real dialog. You’ve likely been on those project calls where there is so much that goes unsaid, because everyone assumes that there is not enough time in the meeting to deal with the real issues — but then, they likely never get resolved. Sure, they might get ‘mitigated’: two people get together and work out some agreement that does not often include an individual that is critical to the conversation. Businesses are replete with unhealthy human behaviors — things that are ‘culturally’ acceptable as they reinforce all behaviors related to ‘not rocking the boat’. In psychology, suppressing such realities lead to any variety of psychoses. Never mind the fact that the boat is sinking.
Creative dissonance (perturbation) is fundamental to the principles of bifurcation (the precursor state to emergence) — a fundamental concept of complexity that not only is fundamental to the unstable ’shift’ we find ourselves in right now, but is also critical to similar ’shifts’ needed for all innovation. Yes, the noise of ‘feedback’ in a sound system is painful to our auditory sensibilities, but it’s a sure means by which someone is going to ‘fix’ the situation. The business reality is, it is often not economically feasible to grease the wheel until it starts squeaking. Enterprise 2.0 is the means by which to allow for considering squeaking wheels — sure we might grease it, but we darned well better be looking at whether or not it’s also about to fall off.
I welcome the addition of references to this post that reference things we need to consider to be able to be more successful at working through such dissonance — the things relevant to healthy dialog. Such references are essential for creating related E2.0 governance models. We’re not used to calling out such things as ‘conditions of use’, as part of the ‘deliverables’ — but for 2.0 they’re critical.
by Jon Husband
September 3, 2009 at 11:40 am · Filed under
Collaboration, Enterprise Social Computing, Measurement, Network Effect, Social Computing
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Further to my post a couple of months back about the ROII (Return on Investment in Interaction), I noticed AppGap blog colleague Patti Anklam’s guest post on Dave Snowden’s Cognitive Edge blog wherein she riffs of a blog post titled "Enterprise 2.0 – Skip the Pilot".
Notwithstanding Michael Idinipulos’ claim to be committing heresy, in the past I have read any number of E2.0 pundits’ suggestions that value will be realized more quickly and more steadily when social computing is introduced to an organzation as "the way things get done around here" when it comes to dealing with and responding the need to beuild useful knowedge from information flows … rather than in small controlled pilots.
Michael adds his voice to that chorus.
Patti picks up on that point and adds to it the notion that the ROII may come from harvesting the output from increased numbers of people, increased numbers of interactions and increased diversity (of perspectives). These metrics are not as hard as past metrics used to measure work and effectiveness, but given that a number of well-known voices have coalesced around the same observable network dynamics, we can expect that they will come to be reference points regarding the effectiveness of adopting E2.0 tools and services.
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Piloting Social Media
A good blog by Michael Indinopulis, "Enterprise 2.0: Skip the Pilot" introduces a nice complex notion. His actual premise is that piloting (the sense that we pilot collaboration software, something I’ve done quite a bit of) is based on using small control groups. We introduce the software carefully, exposing it to only a few people, learn from them what the strengths and weaknesses are, work up required training, make the change management plan, and so on.
But social media is different from traditional software. As he says, "Traditional IT enables transactions; Enterprise 2.0 enables interactions." And interaction is fundamentally different from transactions, which are bounded and constrained. We can’t understand the power of interactions until there are many of them, going out in multiple directions, increasing exponentially.
And there is no value to any individual until there are sufficient interactions bouncing around out there. The solution, therefore, to a moribund social media pilot is not to shut it down and reconsider, but to "Make it bigger. Open it up. Invite more people. Tell them to invite even more people. That’s the only way you’re going to find out the real behavior and the real value."
One of my early lessons about increasing knowledge flow in organizations was the answer to the question, "How do you stimulate knowledge flow in a network?" Possibilities:
Increase the number of people
Increase the number of interactions
Increase the diversity
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by Joe McKendrick
September 2, 2009 at 5:33 pm · Filed under
2.0 Design Thinking, Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Social Computing, User Revolution
McKinsey has just published the results of a survey of nearly 1,700 executives from around the world which paints a highly positive picture of the business returns being seen from Web 2.0 deployments.
Close to seven out of ten respondents (69%) report that their companies “have gained measurable business benefits [italics mine], including more innovative products and services, more effective marketing, better access to knowledge, lower cost of doing business, and higher revenues.”
This is probably the most significant set of survey findings I have seen yet that document actual benefits being seen from Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 deployments. There has been quite a stir in the blogosphere lately about the lack of actual results being seen from these new methodologies (check out Dennis Howlett’s latest post on the topic, along with my colleague Paula Thornton’s observations).
What kinds of benefits, exactly, does McKinsey see coming out of Web 2.0 sites? In the survey, half of respondents report that Web 2.0 technologies have fostered in-company interactions across geographic borders, 45 percent cite interactions across functions, and 39 percent across business units.
The measurable benefits cited span both knowledge management and simple cost-cutting:
Increasing speed of access to knowledge 68%
Reducing communication costs 54%
Increasing effectiveness of marketing 52%
Increasing speed of access to internal experts 43%
Increasing customer satisfaction 43%
Decreasing travel costs 40%
Increasing employee satisfaction 35%
With the growing availability of services over the network, you can see how there will be increased velocity of knowledge and improved communications. It would be interesting to see how employee satisfaction, cited by more than a third, is measured.
Interestingly, the highest-rated Web 2.0 technologies/services in terms of business benefits delivery among companies are video sharing and blogging.
The top-rated technologies in terms of internal use include the following:
Video sharing 48%
Blogs 47%
RSS 42%
Social networking 42%
For external use, such as connecting with partners and suppliers, the following technologies delivered the most benefits:
Blogs 51%
Video sharing 50%
Social networking 49%
RSS 45%
The more the technologies are used, the more benefits seen, the survey also shows. As McKinsey puts it:
“Web 2.0 delivers benefits by multiplying the opportunities for collaboration and by allowing knowledge to spread more effectively…. Among respondents who report seeing benefits within their companies, many cite blogs, RSS, and social networks as important means of exchanging knowledge. These networks often help companies coalesce affinity groups internally. Finally, respondents report using Web videos more frequently since the previous survey; technology improvements have made videos easier to produce and disseminate within organizations.”
McKinsey also observes that more than half of the companies in the survey plan to increase their investments in Web 2.0 technologies, while another quarter don’t expect their level of spending to change. The study also suggests that the turbulent economy may have increased interest in Web 2.0 technologies.
Of course, there are still about a third of respondents that absolutely have not yet seen any business benefits from Web 2.0. What is not clear is whether employees at these companies are using Web 2.0 under the radar, and thus progress cannot yet be measured.
