FASTForward To … Implementation ?

February 19, 2008 at 11:27 pm · Filed under 2.0 Design Thinking, Business Model, Change, Conflict, Culture, David Weinberger, Emergent, Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Social Computing, FASTforward08, Social Computing, Social Networking, Trust, User Revolution, Web 2.0, enterprise software

It seems to me, in the wake of exciting and enlightening presentations by Andrew McAfee, Don Tapscott, John Hagel and David Weinberger, that a core theme coming out this year’s FASTForward 08 conference is, as Andrew pointed out in his first slide, executives and managers in organizations have finally decided what we call Enterprise 2.0 is coming and will arrive whether they like it or not, and that they might as well get on with addressing the question "how" … "how do we do this, "how" do we make this work for us ?

Of course one of the key complicating factors is that implementation of much of Enterprise 2.0 involves some degree or other of empowerment, which has been a bugbear of organizational life and organizational development for a long time.

As I listened to and watched the presentations, my mind kept circling back to three interesting books I’ve gone though in the past couple of years …. 1) McLuhan For Managers - New Tools for New Thinking, by de Kerckhove and Federman, 2) The Future of Management, by Gary Hamel, and 3) The Future of Work, by Tom Malone.  And I thought of other books I have chewed through in the past as well, as the remainder of this post will show.

Combining the theme of the conference (The User Revolution) the two recent and important white papers recently cited on this blog about user co-creation of value leading to new business logic and new business models, John Hagel’s observations on the impact of the user revolution on organizations, and the presentations from the thought leaders cited above, and the countless articles about the changes observed and coming to top-down direction, control and management, one could be forgiven for suspecting that something big is about to come our way.

There’s always attempts to minimise complexity and the need to deeply understand (we were talking about the above issues at lunch today, and one of our lunchtime companions said "you’ve got to keep it simple, otherwise CEO’s and managers won’t engage").  Right !  

And I mean that .. I think he’s right.  Which is why I expect that many companies will have some interesting failures if they try to do too much too fast.  McAfee did note that there aren’t many horror stories out there, but I think it’s clear that as these tools and services spread, increasingly work will need to be re-designed and the changes to organizational structures and dynamics will accumulate until it’s clear that the networked organization operates very differently, and has different needs for hygiene and development than do today’s existing pyramidic organizations.

As a longtime OD practitioner, and with many friends and acquaintances in this field in several countries on at least three continents, may I say that with respect to hyperlinks and electronicised information systems that people use to communicate and sometimes collaborate .. yes there will be complexity added to the process of effectiveness in organizations, and yes, hyperlinks can and sometimes do subvert hierarchy (a la Weinberger).

Many OD consultants know a fair bit about Semler’s leadership of Semco and the structures and dynamics it has engendered, the earlier Saturn environment, self-directed work teams, socio-technical work systems, Barry Oshry’s work on power in social systems, the relative looseness and fluidity of smaller organization, Participative Work Design (Emery & Trist), Weisbord’s Productive Workplaces: Organizing And Managing For Meaning, Dignity and Community, Zuboff’s seminal study of pulp & paper factory workers  chronicled in her book In The Age of The Smart Machine: the Future Of Work And Power, Elliott Jacque’s stratification methodologies according to time-span of decision-making, and so on.  Another practical look at the emerging possibilities for the democratization of the workplace / organization can be found in Thomas Malone’s recent book The Future Of Work.  Seriously, I could go on … the issues are not new, and there’s a rich history out there to tap into.

The issue(s) of empowerment and how to work effectively as information and values exert a democratising effect have been with us for a long time.  There is a lot to learn about the implementation of Enterprise 2.0 initiatives from the thought and work of OD practitioners over the past three or four decades.

But (imo … an important caveat, to be sure) not very much has changed over the past 30 years.  I believe I could make an argument that hierarchy has actually in many instances increased its grip over the past five years.  In saying that, I am consciously remembering David W’s various statements about how hyperlinks and digitally-connected environments can cut the slack out of interactions between people.  With a ruthless focus on efficiency and the use of information technology to pour electronic concrete over many large-scale business processes, we can observe today that when it comes to purposeful interaction between employees and other employees, and employees and customers, and employees and management, there’s not much slack or room to experiment in may organizational systems today … and perhaps little tolerance for the messiness of experimenting with social computing.

Andrew McAfee did say, at the end of his presentation, that implementation would be hard, and that increasingly IT and social computing would create differences in performance between companies.

I think he’s right .. and I also expect that the practice of organizational development will rise from relative obscurity.  But .. and it’s an important but … not too many current OD practitioners have a lot of experience with Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 tools and services.

The good news is that I think there’s a reasonable chance that there’s a new breed of line managers coming along who get this stuff, and will plunge into it relatively enthusiastically.

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Nato says we are losing the Social Media Wars

November 28, 2007 at 4:43 pm · Filed under Al Qaeda, CNN, Conflict, Enterprise 2.0, Nato, Secretary Gates, Taliban, War

Secretary Gates made this statement in a recent speech:

It is just plain embarrassing that al-Qaeda is better at communicating its message on the internet than America. As one foreign diplomat asked a couple of years ago, “How has one man in a cave managed to out-communicate the world’s greatest communication society?” Speed, agility, and cultural relevance are not terms that come readily to mind when discussing U.S. strategic communications.

Only days later, CNN interviews a NATO Official in Afghanistan who echoes the Secretary and insists that we better get good at this or risk losing the real war - which is all political.

The strategy aims to counter years of propaganda video posted on the Internet showing Taliban attacks on NATO forces which fighters use to claim that NATO’s position in the Afghan war is deteriorating.

“The Taliban, who are literally cave-dwellers, are doing better than we are on a key battleground — and that’s video,” said NATO spokesman James Appathurai. “They deploy with videographers. We don’t. They have DVDs out in an hour, we don’t.”

Wielding video cameras like weapons, fighters quickly upload images of their attacks and create a valuable morale booster for their supporters.

Now, after much internal debate, NATO has begun declassifying and posting top secret combat video on YouTube and other Web platforms to try and beat the Taliban at its own game.

“We’re, in a sense, winning the tactical battles, but we’re not focusing enough on the strategic battle, which is public opinion,” said Appathurai.

The link to the excellent report and video is here.

NATO made several video excerpts available to CNN. One excerpt shows an armed Taliban fighter disguised as a woman in a full burqa, taking refuge with women and children to avoid being targeted by NATO.

One disturbing NATO video begins with a birds-eye view of a home in southern Afghanistan where NATO said a high-level Taliban meeting was taking place. Before NATO helicopters took aim at the house, a small boy is posted at the door as a human shield, forcing the NATO chopper pilot to hold fire.

Information is a crucial tool in any war, but is especially important in Afghanistan where the Taliban’s deeds, words and images have portrayed a deteriorating security landscape, with NATO soldiers on the run.

NATO officials argue that this is far from the truth and the country has experienced significant development and growth with constant attention being paid to security problems.

Appathurai said there are hundreds of military combat videos that show the true extent of Taliban engagement and the brutality of their tactics.

He admitted that in the past he had a hard time convincing NATO allies to declassify this sensitive, secret video for wide release. He said on occasion, that will now change.

NATO said the Taliban videos slowly erode the world’s perception of how the Afghanistan mission is progressing. But the Taliban’s media savvy means much more, said one expert.

Videos such as those produced by the Taliban are the lifeblood of terrorist recruiting campaigns, said Glen Jenvey, a UK-based Internet specialist who tracks trends in extremist and jihad content on the Web.

“At one point somebody has actually brainwashed these people to become terrorists, and this is where the recruiting sergeants actually take hold and the online part is an important part of it,” Jenvey said.

This reminds of the the history of the airplane. The first flight was only a few years before WWI. War propelled the technology. With no war, imagine all the people who would have dismissed it. I am getting a feeling that war will propell social media the same way. Real needs to know and to understand and to inform will drive the resources. Business will I think follow.

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The Donut and Terror

October 5, 2007 at 1:41 pm · Filed under 2.0 Design Thinking, Business Model, Charles Handy, Conflict, David Kilkullen, Donut, Enterprise 2.0, Sponsored Post, Terror

I have been writing about how the “Donut” will replace the traditional organization.

Here is Kilkullen on how the “Donut” works in the Terror context:

I find it fascinating when I find that someone I don’t know has seen the same as I.

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The Power of Story in a Messy World

October 5, 2007 at 1:31 pm · Filed under Conflict, David Kilkullen, Enterprise 2.0, Messy World, Public Media, Relationships, Social Media, War

David Kilcullen, an Australian who has been advising General Petraeus is I think one the most perceptive of all those who are thinking about how war itself is conducted now in a social context.

Here is a central idea that he offers - that war now is all about story. The winner has the story that most of the people adopt.

War is increasingly about stories - the social web is how they are told. So the web itself will become key to how wars are fought.

If a big powerful state beats up a weak one - the story causes the host population to lose confidence and in the end, influence the politics to withdraw. The smart opponent knows how to set up the story. After all why the choice of the World Trade Centre? We responded as they expected becuase it was a symbolic attack on our story. Our predictable over-reaction makes us look like bullies and so again - we lose the story as the set up ensured.

How then to respond. I think that Kilkullen’s slide gives us a plotline to follow.

We have to create a compelling narrative that is based on the truth.

I think that all of this also applies to all forms of enterprise. Spin and traditional marketing fails the Story test.

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