Archive for March, 2010
by Rob Paterson
March 11, 2010 at 2:00 pm · Filed under
2.0 Business Model, 2.0 Design Thinking, Chaord, Organizational Design, Robin Dunbar
Many of us are starting to see that there is math that underpins human community – The Dunbar Number and related math that defines the hierarchies of trust are gaining credence as being “real“.
I think that they should be: for surely all else in Nature that is about relationships has math? Light, Gravity, Water and Heat etc. So why would there not be Math that supports how Human Relationships work?
I was re-reading my favourite text the other day – Christopher Alexander’s Pattern Language – and I was stunned, but not surprised, to learn that not only do we humans have a gradient of Trust governed by math but that there are limits in the physical space as well beyond which, we fall out of community. Naturally these limits are hardly known, least of all by architects and maybe hardly at all by any of us who wish to design a physical space that promotes a healthy human community.
Alexander brings up this topic in the section on Small Public Squares (Pattern 61). He asks why so many public squares are dead space?
Here is the Space Magic Number #1 – 70.
- We cannot make out another face much over 70 feet away
- We cannot hear another person properly over 70 feet away
Any space that exceeds this – Piazza San Marco and Trafalgar are exceptions because they are a nexus in a large city and get filled to the right density – feels un social.
So here is Space Magic Number #2 – 300
- Any space with more than 300 square feet per person will feel “deserted”
- So a space with a diameter of 100 feet needs 33 people in it to feel ok
- So a space with a diameter of 35 feet needs only 4
- A space with 60 feet needs only 12
- It’s hard to get 33 or more people into a public space at any one time – it is much easier to get 4
I wonder – do these numbers then tie into what we know about group satisfaction – (Chris Allen)
My bet is that there must be a link between these two sets of numbers.
Forming the best groups in the best spaces will surely have an impact on the power of these groups. This then raises another question. Might getting the group size and the group space optimized have an impact on group power?
Do these numbers have any connection with Adoption?
Might knowing more about ideal groups and ideal spaces address the question that we all have – How can I optimize my power in the world?
Our model until now has been to use money as a substitute for social power.
Are we close now to seeing the Social Power Model? I think so.
In my follow up post to this, I will share a Fractal Model of how we have found social adoption to work in a university setting. If this is Fractal, then the social design we see in a University should match all fields of social groupings.
We may be getting close.
by Bill Ives
March 10, 2010 at 3:44 am · Filed under
Adoption, Enterprise 2.0
Cecile Demailly at the French consulting firm, Early Strategies, recently completed an interesting study of enterprise 2.0 adoption. The report, Toward Enterprise 2.0: Making the Change in the Corporation, is based on an online survey conducted between November 2009 and January 2010. The participants included a primary set of people involved in enterprise 2.0 deployment, and a secondary audience of well-informed users of enterprise 2.0 applications and projects. The majority of participants were European with 18 percent from the US. The report stated that they mostly belong to CIO/IT (38%), followed by HR (16%), Communications (12%) and Marketing (12%).
A number of themes for successful enterprise 2.0 adoptions emerged from the data. Like many others, the respondents indicated that, “though technology is important, it is not about technology.” The report went on to state that, “moving toward enterprise 2.0 is not a standalone game; it has to serve the overall corporate vision. The transformation has to plant its roots into the organization’s culture and strategy.” The report used Schein’s organizational culture model, and the Early Strategies’ Enterprise 2.0 maturity model. It segmented the transformational requirements into three levels.
At the organizational level transformation must support a strategic vision. This could be a broad goal such as being a pioneer in the area or a more focused one such as moving toward more corporate social responsibility. At individual level, the transformation has to help with the daily work. The broad goals of the organization may not be top of mind for the employees who have to undergo a change in the way they work and/or the tools they use. Getting the job done better and more efficiently will be the main driver for them. At management level, an enterprise 2.0 transformation needs to help create a different and more accurate and up-to-date management model. I believe that the transparency built into enterprise 2.0 tools and practices can certainly address this management goal if used properly.
I think this is a useful approach and these three levels need to be working in harmony for the general health of the company, as well as any enterprise 2.0 adoption efforts. The report also states that the benefits on all three levels need to be communicated widely during the adoption process. So far these results are consistent with most management and technology transformations. The report goes on to offer some new insights that may be more specific to enterprise 2.0.
First, it stated, “although there are complex impacts on management, it is important to note that by simply participating, managers transfer their status into the new paradigm; while not participating creates a real discrepancy.” I would agree as the nature of transparent tools changes to course of work. I know of one firm that had its first project come in under budget when they adopted enterprise 2.0 management tools. They attributed this to the transparency as everyone could see what has happening at all times in the process so accountability was clear and continuous improvements were made (see Changing Organization Behavior at XM Radio through Enterprise 2.0).
Next, the report stated, “Middle management appears to be the organization layer where adoption is the slower, or most difficult, for all types of organizations and at all stages.” Now this has frequently happen in organizations going back to the Roman army but it remains an issue to address. Booz Allen spent the majority of its change management efforts on this level as it moved to an enterprise 2.0 collaboration platform.
The third point was, “Networking tools (rich directory, profiles, microblogging, forums, tagging, …) may be deployed just before collaboration tools (wikis, groups, …), or together, rather than the other way around or not being prioritized.” Some of the vendors have recognized this and are prompting their networking tools as a “Trojan horse” before getting into the more complex process of aligning collaboration platforms to work processes. These networking tools can show quick returns and provide a means for viral marketing of these benefits.
The report suggests that, “communicating externally about the internal change may help to change the mindsets internally.” This is an interesting idea. Those that have been successful in enterprise 2.0 are by definition early adopters who often like to promote their efforts in the external world. This external promotion will indicate the importance of the transformation, as well as potentially provide more pride within the workplace.
Finally, it added that it helps when “new educational modes: mentoring and collaborative learning, structured or unstructured, when the community takes care of improving each one’s participation.” I have always found that collaborative peer learning produces the best results. Enterprise 2.0 tools now allow for this peer learning to be more effective. For example, I have seen several instances where switching to blogs in the learning platform dramatically increased results.
I think these are all excellent points. There is much more in the thirty eight page report as I have just touched on a few highlights. It is available at the Early Strategies web site.
by Rob Paterson
March 9, 2010 at 7:25 am · Filed under
Connected Enterprise, Control, Culture
5 reasons why your company should be distributed
I’ve noticed a new trend in Silicon Valley. More and more startups are beginning life as distributed companies, and investors and partners are starting to accept it as normal. Our company Automattic is distributed, and I’m ready to sing the praises of running a business in this way. BTW, I thinkdistributed (“evenly spread throughout an area”) is a better description than the more commonly used virtual (“nearly real or simulated to be real”) for a company that has people working from all over the place instead of a centralized office. In Automattic’s case, we currently have over 50 employees spread across 12 US states and 10 countries.
Here are my top 5 reasons why you should consider the distributed model for your company:
via toni.org
I think that this is indeed the future – the full text follows here
As with all good network designs – most of the direct and indirect costs of the organization go away.
The capital costs are shed and are taken up by the nodes. People work from their place. With their gear. Huge expenses off the table. Huge potential to have the best gear for the staff.
Most of those interruptions go away – who can get any work done at the office these days?
Most of those silly meetings go away.
With NO Commute – so they get hours of time back a day. Let’s say 2 hours a day. 10 hours a week. 40 hours a month. (That’s a working week). 12 weeks a year! That is a lot of dentist visits, plumber visits, time with kids and spouse, time to nap, time to do whatever. And all this time was pulled out of the air as a result of not commuting.
Then of course there are the direct costs of commuting – the car, the transport. It costs $9,000 a year to run a car fully costed. How about coffee and lunch? What do you spend today? $5.0 – $20 a day. That is $1,000 – $4,000 a year for coffee and lunch! How about clothes? I used to buy 2 suits a year as a man. Women can’t get away with that. How much does going to work cost you in clothes? $2,000 – $5,000.
Daycare – well you might still want to send your kid off to daycare but now you might be able to do this locally and walk there. You will not have that pressure at the end of the day to juggle that project and getting to daycare on time. If your child is sick, you have options. And with all the money you have saved on the other things, you can afford a good one.
They live where they want. Huge choice given back. Not only can you choose what part of town, but what town or even country.
Then firm can also hire from a market of 6 billion versus from the local pool – the full talent pool of the planet is open to you.
The costs of travel to meet and hang out now and then are tiny compared to what is spent on a conventional organization.
The communication tools that connect you all now are all but free as well. The Skype offices have big screens that are ON all the time – so you can look up and call out to a colleague in another city as if she was in the next room – for free!
So why not your office? Well if your organization is all about control, then this will never happen. if your organization is all about process and not results, this will never happen. If your organization hires people who don’t have the skills to deliver, this will never happen. If your organization is like this – why are you still there?
Posted via web from Rob’s posterous
by Bill Ives
March 5, 2010 at 3:54 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0, Fortune 500
The team of Nora Ganim Barnes and Eric Mattson at the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth have been dong a number of studies on social media and business (see for example: Thinking Like A Blogger: Is Blogging An Attitude That Can Be Taught?). In 2009, they released one of the first studies of the Fortune 500’s adoption and usage of one of the best-known forms of social media – blogging (see Fortune 500 Blogging Study). This new study, Fortune 500 and Social Media: A Longitudinal Study of Blogging and Twitter Usage, revisits that prior study and expands to look at the Fortune 500’s usage of Twitter.
A Fortune 500 company was counted as having a blog if they had a public-facing corporate blog from the primary corporation with posts in the past 12 months. This is the same definition used in the prior 2008 study. The data was collected in October and November 2009. One hundred-eight (22%) of the primary corporations listed on the 2009 Fortune 500 have a public-facing corporate blog with a post in the past 12 months. This is an increase from 16% in the prior study. The top 100 companies on the list represent 39% of the 108 blogs in the 2009 F500. In 2008, 38% of the total number of blogs came from the top 100. Consistent with the findings on the 2008 Fortune 500, 90% percent of the Fortune 500 blogs take comments, have RSS feeds and take subscriptions
A company was considered a user of Twitter if they had an official corporate account. Of the 108 blogs located, 93 (86%) are linked directly to a corporate Twitter account, that’s more than three times as many as members of the 2008 list. One hundred and seventy-three (35%) of the primary corporations listed on the 2009 Fortune 500 has a Twitter account with a post within the past thirty days. Of the top 100 companies on the list, 47 have a Twitter account.
One hundred and twenty companies (69%) consistently responded with @replies or retweets within the past thirty days. These Twitter accounts are kept up-to-date with current news and information. There is consistent interaction with other users and on-going discussions that are easy to follow.
The researchers concluded that, “the continued steady adoption of blogs and the explosive growth of Twitter among Fortune 500 companies demonstrate the growing importance of social media in the business world.” I certainly agree. It is interesting, but not surprising, that the growth with Twitter exceeds that with blogs. Many marketing departments that missed the blog movement have jumped on the Twitter bandwagon.
by Joe McKendrick
March 4, 2010 at 9:19 am · Filed under
2.0 Design Thinking, Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Software, FASTforward'09, Social Computing, Social Media, User Revolution, Web 2.0
Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com, raised quite a ruckus across the blogopshere in recent days with his declaration that enterprise software should look like Facebook. What does this mean?
Benoiff wrote that he originally used to wonder “why isn’t all enterprise software like Amazon.com?” He pondered at the time that applications should be run from a simple Website, without software or hardware to install and pricey consultants to hire. That was the inspiration for Salesforce.com, he says. Now, he says, enterprise software needs to adopt the collaboration and social networking aspects of sites such as Facebook: “We need to take this idea to our businesses. We need to transform the business conversation the same way Facebook has changed the consumer conversation. Market shifts happen in real time, deals are won and lost in real time, and data changes in real time….”
While Benoiff used his declaration to make a blatant pitch for his latest “Chatter” feature, his point is worth some healthy debate. After all, when the Web and commercial Internet first emerged in the early 1990s, nobody immediately connected the dots between Websites and enterprise applications, which were largely accessed via industrial-strength green-screen terminals directly attached to back-end behemoths. Nevertheless, a decade later, every enterprise application was accessible through a front-end browser, which had become the new norm.
Critics, such as Charles Zedlewski in a follow-up post, argue that Facebook is more of a consumer entertainment venue than a serious, behind the firewall mission-critical application. And, it can be argued that Facebook is the flavor of the month, and two or three years from now, some other type of service will have captured the imagination of fickle consumers.
Actually, the evolution of enterprise software already began a number of years ago, even before Facebook began its existence as a college students’ online meet & greet. I mentioned the dramatic move to Web browser-style interfaces in the 1990s. Now, even without the influence of Facebook, enterprise software is feeling the powerful tug of social networking and Enterprise 2.0, and endpoints will continue to evolve to a collaborative look and feel that enables end-users to maintain their own virtual areas, sharing data and content for a multitude of purposes.
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