iPad – Magazine design – New Culture

May 31, 2010 at 10:02 am · Filed under Adoption

My bet is that as the iPad gets traction that it will force a new kind of design for the print organizations that hope they can use the iPad to save their franchise. Of course at first, like the Horseless carriage, it will look like a print magazine but with links. But here is maybe where it will take us – to a new place that is largely divorced from print.

VIV Mag Interactive Feature Spread – iPad Demo from Alexx Henry on Vimeo.

But of course if all your designers are from print and your leadership can only see print – you can’t. It’s all about culture!

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IBM – The New Workplace – It’s all about the culture

May 31, 2010 at 8:09 am · Filed under Adoption

What is stopping your organization from creating the kind of work environment where you are in control of your time? What is stopping your organization from allowing you to use the tools and the gear  that you know work best for you?

Of course the answer is culture. But who can you use an example to your organization to give you a chance to shift your organizational culture? The answer ironically is IBM!

Last week I called my old IBM buddy Luis Suarez at his home office in a small village on the Canary Islands. I wanted to find out directly what the new IBM was like.

Here is where the Canary Islands are. I show you this to make a point. Luis’s reporting boss is in Madrid and his team is in the US. Each one of his US team live in a separate city. One lives in Toronto. Luis doesn’t even work in the capital of the Canaries but in a  small village. He is part of a group of 200,000 IBMers who work remotely. He is one of 5,000 who use Macs! The IT group at IBM, far from being the Gestapo have a mandate to serve the workplace of the future. Mobility is the key issue. Everything is done to ensure that the individual is connected to the team at any time. The individual chooses their kit. All laptops are supported. All apps are supported. Skype plays a huge role in the organization. All access is supported. Again the key here is to give the IBM worker the ability to control their own work space and to be connected to the larger whole.

My conversation with Luis focused on two strands – what was this like and how had IBM been able to cross the culture barrier. Let’s start with the Culture Barrier.

The key to the culture was to stop measuring presence – ie punching the clock as at a factory – and to start measuring results and outcomes. This of course is true for any consultant. I am not hired to be busy I am hired to get some specific things done. In reality that is how all work should be measured but in reality that is not how work is measured. We measure instead the appearance of work as evidenced by how much we are seen at the office.

Once you make this cultural shift, then everything opens up. Also the organization gets more focused. After all were we not all meant to be going somewhere and not merely being busy?

The other key to the culture was to get the IT department and the CIO behind their main task which is enabling the people to get the most out of their investment in technology. In most organizations the role of IT and the CIO is in effect the opposite. It is to control the legacy systems at all costs.

Now the full power of all that is happening in the world of tools and apps becomes available. Security is something that you design in rather than make security the only issue.

So what is life like for Luis and for the 200,000 other IBMers who work outside of the “office”?

First of he gets to choose where he lives. Luis is not a native Canarian and comes from Northern Spain. He could have worked in Madrid. One of the worlds most attractive cities. Also right up there in costs. But, like me he loves the Island life. He lives in a place of remarkable beauty that is very affordable too but he is paid a global wage. He has an aesthetic and a surplus that is not normally available to those that choose to live in a major city.

His team is in North America spread over a number of time zones. Luis’s work day begins at noon and ends at 7pm which in Spanish culture is ideal because dinner is not usually until 9.30 or 10pm. Of course these hours are not fixed because he is measured by results. He has a huge amount of flexibility. No fretting about the plumber or the dog going to the vet. If he had been married lots of space to be a great parent. No commute. No office wardrobe.

I asked Luis about that dreaded part of the conventional office – all those interminable meetings!

The team are connected in real time by a variety of chat tools. If you have a question, you ask it. Most issues are settled in real time meaning that they only have one meeting a week and that is very focused. In a virtual meeting like this, everyone is still working in parallel. In a face to face meeting this is impolite, but in a virtual meeting it helps. As issues shift on the agenda, new material is surfaced. There are never any minutes etc because it is all recorded in real time.

The meeting that really count are the social ones. Periodically the team gets together face to face and works and most importantly bonds. Because they are all on the road, they spend a lot of the time socially. THIS is the glue that works better than being “at the office” all day with people that you don’t really know.

So what does this mean?

It means that there is no excuse anymore. If IBM can do this with 200,000 people so can you.

It means that the whole work/life issue can be taken off the table. So long as you have to turn up at the same time at a place far from home, there can be no balance.

The key? Measure results. The outcome, a vibrant engaged, enthusiastic workforce and a focused organization. What could be better than that?

Oh yes and one more thing. Everyone’s costs get lowered. Luis can choose where he lives and plant roots. He has no commuting costs. IBM save on the office costs. My bet is that if we could see the healthcare costs of IBM, they would be much lower than in a firm that insisted on the old ways. For what drives our health more than any other factor is the issue of control.

The old adage used to be “No one got fired for hiring IBM”. Maybe we can modify this today and say “If IBM can do this, so can we”

In closing, seeing is believing. In July Luis has promised some video of what hos workplace and life is like – watch this space.

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E2.0 Power Term: Sharing

May 28, 2010 at 3:13 pm · Filed under Emergent, Enterprise 2.0, FASTForward '08

Everybody’s talking about social: social networking, social CRM, social-this, social-that. It’s all just noise to me. We’re social. Get over it. It’s redundant. It only has to be called out because the stupid technology wasn’t designed for real people. We get it already.

Heck, I’ve even been blathering about transparency, bladda, bladda. While all of this is still relevant, I now see the value in fine-tuning our focus just a bit. The real potential — the power curve — is in focusing on sharing.

Sharing is something that comes naturally to people — we want to help each other. Indeed sharing is at the top of the list in All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.

Working with each other ensures the survival of the species. It turns out that survival of the fittest isn’t just about strength, power and the ability to overpower others by competition — everyone for themselves — but that truly sustainable species rely equally on cooperation, or social sharing.

What we see in the wild is not every animal for itself. Cooperation is an incredibly successful survival strategy. Indeed it has been the basis of all the most dramatic steps in the history of life.

Business cultures are ripe with language and actions of competitiveness. Many seek to ‘protect turf’. These behaviors are relevant during times of duress and/or limited resources. But embracing such language and mindsets can actually create duress and serve to unnecessarily limit the potential of existing resources.

A very telling visual representation of the limits imposed by such mindsets is the chart grabbed from a TED presentation by Johanna Blakley who spoke about the real issues that Intellectual Property protection impose on creativity and growth. [Thanks to @jorgebarba for sharing]

On the left are the 2007 Gross Sales in US $BIL of industries with low IP protection, on the right are the high IP. The evidence is staggering. Johanna also created her own chart to lay out a comparison of common items and where they fall into a copyright scheme.

Indeed what most intrigued me was when Johanna made the subtle distinctions between the idea and the expression thereof. We’ll just leave that as a pending topic to explore further, another time.

We’ve talked about IP on this blog before. The topic had high visibility at FASTforward ‘08 with a banner exclaiming (a quote that appears to be attributable to Bill Gates): “Intellectual Property has the shelf-life of a banana.” Heck, I even remember the most significant change I noticed in Bill Gates demeanor toward his competitors (even in close range on panels at Gartner conferences where the analysts relished stirring up trouble), when he exclaimed (paraphrasing):

I learned, this isn’t a zero sum game. When my competitors make money, I make money too.

And in a panel I hosted at FASTforward ‘08, I recall the most significant points brought up, related to IP and the negative implications in our changing environment:

• It’s both expensive and time consuming to actually protect intellectual property
• The rate of turnover of products is increasing at a rate that the window of opportunity to protect them is becoming shorter than the time it takes to do so
• The costs to protect IP are rising at a faster rate than the potential earnings to be gained

[Kudos to @jhagel @jobsworth @jmcgee and @billives for BE-ing the panel, and to @skemsley for covering it. I find it none-too-coincidental that they're all active on Twitter.]

Even the almighty dollar (euro, yen, etc.) is wielding its influence on concerns over publicly-shared infrastructure as companies rethink their opposition to operating in the cloud.

Enterprise 2.0 seeks to shift the balance away from oppressive, limiting cultures by facilitating open, sharing ways of working and ‘being’. Even in cultures where this is not the norm, E2.0 technologies and approaches will allow for the natural working and sharing tendencies of people to emerge and return the critical balance needed not just for sustainable survival but for productive striving (another great s-word).

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My Notes from the 2010 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium Notes: Enterprise 3.0?

May 26, 2010 at 3:27 am · Filed under FASTforward'09

I recently attended the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium for the second time. It is an annual one-day conference, held on the MIT campus. The site describes it as an event “where CIOs and other senior business executives from around the world gather to explore how leading-edge academic research and innovative technologies can help address the practical challenges faced in today’s changing economy.”

I attended a session, Enterprise 3.0 led by Andy McAfee, now Research Scientist, Center for Digital Business, MIT Sloan School of Management. Panel members included Ralph Swick
, COO, W3C, Gregg Hansen, VP of IT, Advanced MicroDevices, Gene Rodgers
President and COO
Clearway, and Edward Curry, Research Scientist, DERI.

Andy held up his Enterprise 2.0 book and said to hurry up and buy it as it may become obsolete as we are now on to Enterprise 3.0. He promised to define the term during the session. That was my question: WTF is enterprise 3.0?

Ralph mentioned that the Web is only twenty years old. Many people have only known its premise and not its absence. Many Web 2.0 features such as writing to the Web were part of the original proposal 20 years ago.  It just took a while for them to take hold. Andy asked for definitions of Web 3.0 and he admitted it was fuzzy for him.

Ed said Web 3.0 is trying to break down barriers between data. Andy interrupted and said that this was part of Web 2.0. Ed said that the Web 2.0 effort was related to documents (and other content.) Now he is talking about standardized ways to work with data (inside content as well in data warehouses). Now we need to integrate data, rather than simply systems, and make it easier to work with data. There have been three barriers – need to make data available, need to make it easy to access the data – do not require learning different technology for each data set, need to be able see relationships to other data that is relevant. Web 2.0 did this to documents (assume that means any Web content including blog posts) and Web 3.0 tries to do it to data.

Ralph added that we are not talking about a massive consolidation of data warehouses but opening access to it where it lives. The reason to open data is to discover new things to do with it. (sounds a bit like mashups to me – and they said this later). Andy says that he gets confused when he hears about the semantic web (me too). Is it making it easier for people to find data and connect it or for systems to find data and link it? Ralph said the current step is to make data available, presumably to both people and systems.

Gene said he is still trying to understand enterprise 20 but he sees enterprise 3.0 as driving context and insights on top of data use, His development teams work globally, not sharing language or time. They are using new tools for this. His teams collaborate using web 2.0 methods but what is missing is context – can you bring a bug tracking system itself as part of the conversation on how to make it better – enterprise 2.0 creates its own silos, It needs the enable greater connections to enterprise apps and people.  I agree and have written about this a bit. He said with enterprise 3.0 search becomes the key enabler. It becomes a system for deriving insight and sharing it with a team.

Gregg said that people need to be able to add their context to data and share it so perspectives are shared. Then insight gets aggregated. We need to avoid having to start from scratch each time when working on a problem. We need to see complete history of efforts easily.

Ralph said enterprise 3.0 is finding the relevant information and bringing it into the conversation. Andy says that this sounds like a lot of work. Ralph said it does not have to be complex if you set things up right. You can go back to find stuff when it as needed.

Andy asked if we need to go back and retrofit the existing legacy systems? Ralph said that you can drill holes into existing systems to gain access and do not have to wait for them to die. So you will have to do some work but not have to throw them away.  You also need to find the high value data sets and focus efforts there. You do not have to have everything connected before you start. It can be evolutionary.

Gregg mentioned current ways to join structured and unstructured data. This use is built around dashboards and mashups.  For example, today marketing teams mine social media for sentiment. They create reports. Meanwhile the sales teams in the same firm may be using old style technology to manage accounts. It would be a logical extension to get the sales teams using social media for their own communication. Then you can more easily feed in the sentiment analysis form the Web as preparation for sales calls.

Andy asked about the difference between the new world of mashups and the old world of systems integration. Gregg said it is in the interface and the intelligence. Ralph said the big difference is that now users can do it themselves and not have to bring a system integration team.  Andy asked if are we making a geek mistake to assume that regular people will want to this themselves? Ralph said that 90% of the people will just want to push a button. But the 10% power users will want to do things themselves and then they can share it with other 90%.

Andy said the enriched data connections (of semantic tech) always seems to be just around the corner – for the past dozen years – why is it going to happen now?  Gregg said it is already happening now but the challenge of handling data is complex. The point about enabling power users to lead the way Is spot on. But it is hard and that is why it has been so slow.  Some of the early adoptions of semantic technology have been inside the enterprise (where there is more control) rather than on the outside Web.  This more controlled environment makes it easier.

I think this clears away a bit of the fog for me around enterprise 3.0 (aka semantic web). But it still seems to be an aspiration that is just emerging (see my Enterprise Search Summit 09 post – Is Semantic Technology Real?). I would also not use the enterprise 3.0 label for something that has been around before enterprise 2.0 and Web 2.0. Why not just call it the semantic web?

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Bringing Social CRM to a ‘Competitive, Fiesty Bunch’ of Employees

May 24, 2010 at 7:00 am · Filed under FASTforward'09

It’s becoming self-evident that Web 2.0 is providing new avenues for identifying and engaging with customers, but are there benefits being seen in the processes behind customer engagements –such as processing orders and managing customer relationships?

Ideally, given the open nature of Web 2.0 and social networking, salespeople and sales managers will be more empowered to manage the sale process more responsively and profitably. “The theory behind this is sound,” notes Dennis McDonald, Ph.D. in a study of about 300 sales managers from various enterprises. “When salespeople can pick and choose what information they want to see and subscribe to on a regular basis, whether it’s from their parent company’s CRM system, from a local area network database,
from a commercial subscription service, or from the public cloud, they can use Web 2.0 tools to select the information that makes the most sense to them and the tasks at hand.”

But often, what sounds good in theory often gets messy in practice. For example, McDonald observed, survey respondents pointed to how salespeople can be a competitive, feisty bunch. “Despite the value of ‘collaborating’ in order to better understand and respond to a customer’s needs, for example, many salespeople are reluctant to share information about a sale with their peers if they think they might lose competitive advantage—or a potential commission—in the process. You really need to modify how sales commissions are awarded and shared in order to reward collaboration.”

This was one of the great failings of the sales force automation systems that were introduced in the 1990s — they were great technology that nobody wanted. As McDonald points out, “providing the technology that supports collaboration is not sufficient. Salespeople need the skills, time, motivation, and support to customize and/or use Web 2.0 technologies.”

Despite these natural reservations, McDonald, who has done a lot of work in the enterprise social media space, observes that  Web 2.0 and social media are having an impact various stages of the sales process, beyond the most apparent impacts of improving the outcomes of prospecting and customer qualification.  (Complete PDF of McDonald’s findings available here.)  The study came to my attention when McDonald responded to my recent post on Social CRM Should be a Redundant Phrase, which discussed some of the issues with fusing social networking with existing CRM processes.

McDonald’s survey covered about 300 sales managers from a range of enterprises, and discusses how “web 2.0” systems and applications can support management of sales processes. The survey did not focus on adoption of specific technologies such as social networking, blogs, wikis, or other technologies but instead sought to address sales manager satisfaction with the different processes currently involved in locating, managing, and closing sales, and where Web 2.0 applications could provide the most benefit to the overall sales process.

McDonald sought to separate the internal aspects of sales-related communication and collaboration from the external aspects. He suggests that collaboration involving outside communities could be tainted by both lack of control and involvement by competitors. “When addressing Web 2.0 support for sales-related communication and collaboration, it’ important to distinguish whether participants or processes being considered are internal or external to the sales team’s organization,” he writes. “For example, while involvement with the social and professional communities surrounding business prospects may improve market intelligence about business prospects, such communications are not as controllable as traditional one-to-one communications between buyer and sellers. Internally, collaboration that cuts across organizational boundaries might be impacted by existing organizational rivalries.”

Another area of concern is the impact of Web 2.0 and social networking on compensation. “Some within-sales-force collaboration may be resisted by salespeople if this raises fears of reduced competitiveness or shared commissions. To promote such collaboration it may be necessary to modify compensation plans to reward certain types of collaboration.”

Web 2.0 and social media processes may help move lengthier and more complex sales processes along, he also concludes. “The more participants will be involved as the process evolves. Making information gathered at one stage available to other participants “downstream” will help ensure a smooth transition from sales to delivery and servicing of the customer. Organizational or departmental barriers that restrict collaboration across groups should not be allowed to disrupt the sales process and satisfaction of the customer.”

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