From a read of the announcement, it appears that collectively we are still on the path towards social computing becoming a fixture in the knowledge-based workplace … hardly a surprise.

I (and many others) have said here, and elsewhere, that the ubiquitous presence of the Web, the growing ease-of-use of tools and services, and the growing understanding of productivity in a networked era, are leading inexorably to a fundamental re-think of the way(s) knowledge work is carried out and the type(s) of organizational culture necessary to support that productivity.

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Across all categories, the use of Web 2.0 technologies by employees for internal purposes has increased from 53% in 2007 to 65% of respondents in 2009.

The largest components of growth have come from using Web 2.0 to develop new products / services internally, to manage internal knowledge and to reinforce the company culture via tools such as internal social networking applications.

The companies who have embedded these tools in their day-to-day activities and processes have seen the largest impact by improving communication across silos to reduce duplicate work and leverage experts in other areas.

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The report notes that enterprise use of Web 2.0 technologies to connect and interact with business partners and suppliers has slowed down or stagnated … again, not much of a surprise given the often transactional nature of those relationships and the fact that electronic connections between those parties have existed in one form or another for quite some time now.

The final statement of this most recent McKinsey report offers, in my opinion, some clear writing on a big wall … “expertise in the use of Web 2.0 technologies is becoming a required skill for all enterprises.”

When will your organization adopt, or grow its capabilities and culture with respect to, collaboration platforms and Enterprise 2.0 expertise and dynamics ?

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The momentum we see in the growth of Web 2.0 technologies implies we will see higher penetration in 2010 for using these technologies for employees to collaborate and to facilitate interactions with customers.

To drive increased usage for managing interactions with suppliers and partners, companies will need to find ways use these technologies to augment the formal relationships between business entities and not substitute formal interactions with more ad hoc ones.

Nonetheless, it is clear that expertise in the use of Web 2.0 technologies is becoming a required skill for all enterprises.

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… on what he calls “the most exciting day in his professional life“, as the Dachis Group announces that it will work with Headshift to grow its capabilities in bringing social business design and implementation to the business world.

Here and elsewhere I’ve often written about the growing evidence that social computing will become the core foundation of knowledge work … the major vendors are all focused on social-media centred enterprise collaboration and productivity platforms as a major line of business, and there is a growing realization that the participative dynamics of the pervasive hyperlinked web environment are here to stay.  Today’s work needs to be, and will be designed in and for social networks

The Dachis Group has re-visited the whole-systems thinking / cybernetics arena of 25 – 30 years ago and updated it to present a holistic value proposition for today’s interlinked and participative era, and are calling it “social business”.

I think I’d argue that business has always been a social undertaking, but that we passed through a period of management philosophy cum reductionism (through the prism of “management science”) whereby enormous gains were obtained over more than a half a century through a relentless focus on efficiency and redundancy.

Now we are in (back to, some would say) an era where information is passed around and shaped into knowledge through interaction with others, it just happens faster by many orders of magnitude.  And so, it ups the ante for understanding how to operate effectively in the fast-flowing communications networks that characterize the environment.

I suspect that soon all or most of the major consulting firms will be headlining their social media consulting practices (now that working with all these tools and web services has become too important to be left to amateurs

Amongst all the offerings we are sure to see, clearly the Dachis Group is bringing a systems perspective to their three-pillared vision (business partner optimization, workforce collaboration and customer participation).  In presenting the model, they state that the way(s) work and business are done are in the midst of massive transformational change.

Interconnected ecosystems of interest, efficiency and purpose are clearly central to today’s and tomorrow’s organizational effectiveness.  Focusing on the right levers has always been the essential value in and by strategic consulting, and these are bright and experienced people.  I am sure they will add an useful perspective to understanding how “social” and “business” will co-exist as we all learn how to operate in tomorrow’s postindustrial societies.

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We are growing: Dachis Group expands with Headshift

We believe that organizations across the globe will begin to view “social media” as social business and when this happens, integration, scale and adoption will become complex issues which will only be solved through a purposeful act of coordinated activities built upon a solid strategic foundation. Enter social business design as a systematic comprehensive approach that orchestrates social business across three core areas: business partner optimization, workforce collaboration and customer participation.

These three areas of business possess ripe opportunities for the emergence of improved outcomes ranging from cost savings to new product/service innovations and increased revenue streams.

These are outcomes which happen when organizations connect and expand their ecosystems, evolve toward a more open culture and empower employees, business partners and customers to actively participate in their business.

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Thanks to Paul Thomas, guest-blogging at the Cognitive Edge, a networked organization focused on applying complexity theory in practical ways to complex issues and organizational problems.

(Dr Thomas is founder of the complexity theory think-tank organization DNA Wales, Head of Leadership at the Business School, University of Glamorgan and is also the BBC Wales ‘Business Doctor’. Paul works with private and public sector organisations of all sizes, including multi-nationals, trying to show them there is another way to run the workplace.)

The title is lifted from the Cognitive Edge blog (extract below).

I have not yet read the Macleod Report (I’ve skimmed through it) ) but it seems that the Cognitive Edge blog post lays out yet-another-argument for coming to terms (or grips, or whatever) with the probability that it (social computing) will become the main way of carrying out the bulk of non–routine knowledge work.

Oh .. and of course I don’t think that all management concepts and activities should be dropped holus-bolus.  I do, however, think, that managers everywhere should start really trying to understand the new social dynamics and methods of constructing pertinent knowledge that are now available, and making thoughtful and sensible decisions about why and how people get engaged with getting things done on purpose.

I know, I know .. it sounds like heresy to not constantly "tinker" in order to improve processes, efficiency and effectiveness.  After all, we’re all familiar with concepts like continuous improvement, orthodox performance management schemes, Six Sigma, reengineering, etc. 

However, how many of us have often wondered about whether or not people have an orientation towards doing things better, easier, faster, cheaper, if we find ways to honour their desire to do good work, to be respected, to make meaningful contribution, to be heard … 

Maybe (in some or many instances) there’s too much structure, too many goals, overly rigid mindsets and worldviews … not enough questions, not enough debate, too few mistakes (how many discoveries or innovations are preceded by mistakes?), not enough "failing faster to learn faster", not enough acknowledgement of the deep motivations of people to serve others and do more useful and meaningful work, etc. ?

There’s a reason why the word "unleashed" gets used so often in books, articles and conversations about organizational effectiveness .. and I don’t think it means turning a horde of web-bots loose onto the organization’s processes.  It has something to do with people and their motivation and guidance.

Anyone else ever wonder ?

I think that’s what this report from the UK government suggests.  But I will have to go beyond skim-reading it to confirm that guess.

What do you think ?

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MacLeod Review says people potential should be ‘unleashed’

[ Snip ... ]

The MacLeod Review of employee engagement, commissioned by the Department for Business, has said workers need to be properly involved in the future of their firms.

Author David MacLeod said he wanted to see people’s potential “unleashed” and said engagement was a key to innovation and competitiveness. Apparently the report’s authors were told during their research that “trust works two ways” and that not trusting staff had a negative impact. They were also told it was people, not machines, which made the difference to a business.

Responding to the report employment relations Minister Lord Young said: “Workers know better than anyone how the firm they work for can improve, innovate and succeed.”

If this all sounds familiar, that’s no surprise.There’s nothing radical, or even new, about this report.

[ Snip ... ]

Of course people are the key to a company’s success. Of course the best people to ask for a solution to a company’s problems are those within it and on the frontline. And it stands to reason that if you haven’t got everyone in the organisation fully behind what you’re trying to achieve, you’ve got less chance of achieving it.

The Government says it accepts the report’s recommendations and now there’ll be an action plan to deliver them.

Now that the message is becoming more mainstream, maybe those who run our organisations will forget their management tools, and constant ‘tinkering’ with the system and finally wake up to the fact that this is the only way to make them fitter for the future.

Let’s hope they don’t just pay it lip-service, and they actually do it.

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So this spring when I got a call from Howard Blumenthal CEO of MiND, in Philadelphia, my instincts told me that this was a very very important call.

No TV operation is more unique than MiND (or, properly, MiND: Media Independence).

MiND is not a PBS affiliate. It broadcasts a stream of 5-minute programs, many made by MiND’s staff producers, some made by members of the public who attend MiND’s production Boot Camps. MiND is both on air and on the web. The staff have their own voice in a way that I have never seen anywhere before in media or ANY other place of work. It was not only a novel TV operation – it was a novel organization. It was what a 2.0 organization would be like- inside and outside. As an independent community licensee, MiND makes the most of its freedom–and engages everyone who walks through the door.

So I booked my flight and flew down to see Howard and his team.

So what did I find? How to make TV, the Gutenberg of our time.

You don’t believe me? Please invest 5 minutes in this film.

Did you get it? I found it compelling. A beautifully crafted story. Here is a heartfelt comment on IMDB. Made by a real pro – right? No – made by a regular citizen, Leontyne Anglin, whose passion is the topic but who had never made a film before.

The impact of Gutenberg’s technology in the 1500’s was to give people a voice. If video and TV are the main means of communication today, then the “New TV” must give people a voice. This is surely more than uploading to YouTube or adding comments to a web video. Merely pointing and shooting does not make you a filmmaker. When you have the ability to tell a story well – then you need a place where your early work reaches an audience with an already-established relationship with a trusted brand.

This is what happens at MiND. Day-in and day-out. It’s the reason why the system was built. And it’s working.

The key to MiND is found in its willingness to help the public learn how to be real video storytellers. MiND’s core members have joined a tribe of filmmakers with something to say. MiND’s eagerness to provide every storyteller access to its Trusted Space makes all the difference—MiND is a branded space that adds real depth and texture to the word “public” in the term “public television.”

How does MiND do this?

First of all, MiND employs a production staff drawn from the public and not from the priesthood. It has attracted such a staff by its culture and by its remarkable intern-and-volunteer system. While many stations regard interns as more trouble than they are worth, MiND has transformed coping with, and training, more than 200 interns into common practice. As such, the keen are fed into the system and the cream rise to the top. Nearly a third of MiND’s current staff members started as either volunteers or interns.

Secondly, MiND has built a transformational training system modeled on and called ‘Boot Camp.’ It is transformational in that a citizen comes in with all sorts of wild expectations about television and media; after six hours of intensive training, she is on the path to making a real MiND program that will go on the air and become part of MiND’s extensive internet library of 5-minute programs. In time, she becomes an enabled storyteller.

Leontyne went to a MiND Boot Camp. She was a doubter – MiND’s promise seemed too good to be true. But Leontyne and two others at the Boot Camp took up the challenge. They developed an idea, checked back with MiND to make sure they were on the right track, and made a terrific MiND program.

As a result, Leontyne is a new person–and now, one of MiND’s most vocal advocates. On her own terms, she has become video- and story- literate. She possesses new power in the most powerful medium of our age.

She is not an anomaly.

Here is a short documentary film made by another MiND intern. It’s broadcast quality in every way – a strong story line and intricate editing combine old and new footage. The person who made this film has become an accomplished filmmaker–and is now a teacher at a small college in New England.

MiND is creating a core of accomplished story/film makers who can help their community as storytellers. In time, with MiND’s support, Philly (and in time, other cities that may carry a local version of MiND as their own service) can develop a cadre of the new, media-literate creative workers engaged in the betterment of their home, their neighborhood, their city. It does not take much to imagine what they could do.

The incentive that MiND offers its “students” and interns is that not only will they gain the skills that they will need for our time, but that the work will be showcased on TV and the web–by a Trusted Brand.

All artists want their work to have an audience. TV is 1.0 but it offers a reward like no other. “Hey Mom my work is on TV!” So MiND is expanding its reach to other markets. It is building a national alliance in most of the key markets of the US – details here. The bigger the audience, the greater the impact.

So what next?

It is no secret that all the public stations in Pennsylvania are under pressure because their Governor plans to cut all state funding. MiND’s low cost approach makes it especially vulnerable–just completing its first year, MiND has focused on operational efficiency, programming and community; MiND’s first revenue programs are just beginning, and are insufficient to cover a 40% cut in the total budget. MiND will not stop–but it will slow down as resources disappear.

This is the reason for my post today–to encourage the public television community to consider what MiND has done in its first year, and how its ideas might be used to reinvigorate a tired system. MiND is not the full answer but it contains most of the DNA for the full answer and so I felt compelled to tell its story now.

What can we all learn from this?

Set up a new organization to do this – The station culture is key. MiND is a 2.0 Culture. Here is how it sees itself. These are not simply words on a page. With 30 plus years in the field of culture – I observed first hand that this is no bull – what they say is how they are. So you cannot change all your station culture to be like this. I also know that to be true. So what can you do? Clay Christenson is clear – set up a separate organization to house this aspect of the new - your transformational organization. I know of several stations that are thinking along these lines. You cannot make this shift inside the old–but you can make the shift if the new is allowed to grow alongside the old.

The Goal Is Self Reliance – The goal is to transform your community to be self-reliant – to do that you have to be able to tell the collective story of how people are bringing about change in your community. To do that you need to develop real storytellers by teaching them how to tell stories– and you have to imbue their stories with the added value of your brand. Create a “school” for the new literacy. Bring in the people as interns and volunteers. Bring in the young. Use your digital channels and the web as the “channel.” Or, let MiND show you how; they are willing and capable guides. And, please, don’t get caught up in the validity of five-minute programs–not before watching MiND or considering the sheer number of unique five-minute programs that can be produced in a year.

Gain strength and power by connecting. Connect to the institutions organizations in your community who need this kind of help – use your storytellers to give them a voice. How might non-profits be involved? How about schools (K-12 and higher education)? What if everyone really did have a voice–and what if that voice defined the future of public media? Imagine connecting with other stations across America and the world–perhaps create a national network with MiND at the core – and jointly build MiND as an initiative that engages people at the local, regional, national, even global level. It’s clear that MiND was built with precisely that strategy at its core. Increase the power of the collective story by comparing what’s happening in Philadelphia with what’s happening in Chicago or Denver, and ultimately, with Mumbai or Warsaw.

MiND benefits from a wonderful gift–it is one of the few truly independent agents within public media–in fact, the company’s official name is (you guessed it) Independence Media. From that independence has grown true innovation. Make no mistake–this is not a play by a tiny public TV station operating at the edge of reality. Instead, it is likely the center of a new solar system with increasingly powerful gravitational pull.

We will not get through the turbulence of our times by relying on the status quo in any part of our lives. So I do my bit to tell the story of Howard and his band of sisters and brothers at MiND.

Bless them all. And for my American friends, about to celebrate their annual holiday, do consider the value, opportunity and responsibilities associated with independence.

This is what the new organization looks like:

Here Valdis uses a real community – (OCL) – on the outside a loose group of “lurkers”. In the Green group – groups of loosely connected sub groups – In the Centre – the Core – a densely connected group that acts like a Sun. It has both mass that acts as a social gravity attracting inwards. It also acts as the sun in that this group also shines energy out that reaches to the far edges of the outer group.

Here is Valdis’ view of the core or as I call it the “Sun”.

Here is another view of what the “Sun” can do – it is an adoption force. Once the Sun is powerful enough, it can shift the paradigm. This may be how people get a disease like flu, adopt a new fashion. Or adopt social media and then a new view of how the world really works – that we are not part of a machine but part of an interconnected universe!

So the implications are clear for me anyway.

Adopting Social Media has nothing to do with the tools. After all the tools are cheap and easy to use. It is all about rewiring the habits and the mindset of people.

If you wish to have your organization adopt this new mindset and hence also its tool kit of social media. You are going to have to create a “Sun” – a densely connected but small group that are committed to the bigger idea that is the energy behind the Sun.

The numbers required for the core are modest. A core of 8 will get you an inner ring of 4,000. A core of 34 will get you an inner ring of 1,300,000. 89 will get you 62,000,000.

The leverage that is possible is incredible when compared to the traditional organization. This is where the costs fall away and the impact goes up.

I will talk more about this and offer you a number of real examples.

But here is the key insight. The Big idea cannot be about the internal needs of the organization. It can’t be about your sales, your profits etc. It cannot be about YOU. For the Sun to access the full energy of people and to spread out to the edge, it must be about US. It must be about the larger group that includes everyone who will be in the community.

More later.

I focused ‘between the lines’ and ‘outside the box’ — the larger experience of what makes Zappos, well, Zappos. I’ve watched a lot of videos about the place, follow Tony on Twitter, and even did a brief piece on them before, but as with other 2.0 experiences, immersion makes all the difference.

The ‘get to the chase’ version:

• The Zappos environment is a full-blown corporate anomaly: full of things that most corporations would dismiss as being “unproductive”, “chaotic”, “unmanageable” and “unprofitable”.

Between the Lines: Note on video…the flags on poles…critical artifacts of the culture.

• People LOVE to work here (earning a spot on Fortune’s coveted”100 Best Companies to Work For” 2008 list). Why not? They get to follow their passions (even if they want to invite Ellen to come to Zappos) and evolve their own path of doing ‘work’, all while having LOTS of fun.
• The results: 2008 sales = over $1BIL
• Bottom Line: This crazy stuff works and they’ll even tell you how to do the same.

The ‘insights’ version:

• The Zappos experience begins way before the on-site tour. Even vendors coming on sales calls are picked up in Zappos-branded vehicles (3 SUVs and a bus in the fleet) at the airport or their hotel.
• My driver, Zack, was the Shuttle Manager. He was eager to talk about just how much he loves the company and its culture (even as a New York transplant). He worked his way into his job because he just likes to drive, which he sees a lot of: 4-5 drivers make 150-200 runs a week!
• During major conventions shuttle runs get a bit hectic, but Zack was proud that they were able to ramp up and cover 300 runs during the February 2009 CES convention (having a work culture that allows them to tap into volunteers throughout the company, makes a huge difference).
• Walking through the doors is not like entering any other company: people in motion and endless visual stimulus. Everything has been thought of, including checking in your luggage, complete with a ticket, and getting you a drink.
• Tours at Zappos are like a parade — tour guides carry a flag/banner, which alerts employees to greet guests. My guide, Jerry, while retired from Nordstrom (a company also founded on great shoe sales and service) had infectous energy that belies his ’silver’ exterior. The tour itself cannot adequately be described in words — the videos are a must watch.

Between the Lines: Our tour was cut short as CEO Tony Hsieh was available, so we headed straight for the ‘jungle’ (the location of his office) to catch Tony for his interview where he reminded me again of their ‘other’ brand 6PM.com.

• Not to downplay my chat with Tony (he gets so much press already), I was anxious to talk briefly with Alfred Lin (@Zappos_Alfred) because he holds both the COO and CFO roles, which I asked him about. His answers were insightful and his presence clearly belies his kid-like avatar on Twitter.

• I was a bit surprised to find out just how far they take their Core Value “Do More With Less”. Clearly operating as a 2.0 company, internally they leverage only very basic technology (email, wiki, blog, newsletter, word-of-mouth), in very simplistic ways — allowing for natural collaboration and connections of a tight culture to carry the rest.
• To dip yourself into the Zappos culture on an ongoing basis, be sure to check out employee voices via their many blogs.
• Oh, and did I mention, they sell shoes, accessories and clothing?

The last half of the Tour is shared in two parts.

• On average, 4-8 tours come through every day — more during the annual shoe conventions. While Jerry and Donavon are the primary tour guides, any employee can take the tour guide course and serve as a fill-in. This wasn’t staged — this is the ‘norm’ in their culture.
• The entire environment is a testament to their culture, of constant motion, immersion and learning. There are 4 bookcases at the entrance with multiple copies of ‘current reads’ for employees to grab and enlighten themselves — including Tribal Leadership (Zappos sponsors a downloadable audiobook version).
• Learning is for EVERYONE, on both sides of the coin — giving and receiving. Classes are ‘live’ and taught by employees. If you’re moving ‘up’ to a role, you’ll be taught by people currently ‘in’ the role. Likewise, you’ll teach those coming in behind you.
• Inspired by some of the things gleaned from Tribal Leadership, a more structured “Pipeline” path was created for classes. Training Supervisor, Loren Becker, readily shared the outline of the Pipeline program (which she merely had to print from the Zappos Wiki and had in my hands within minutes). Simplistic, there are:
  • Core-Level Classes (in 6-month segments)
    For the first 18 months of employment, a total of 213 required hours — the majority of which is “Customer Loyalty Training”, plus books to be read.
  • Management-Level Classes
    Includes 37 required hours (with department-specific specialization added in) and 6 recommended books
  • Leadership-Level Classes
    Includes 32 required hours (including hours to ‘teach’ classes, as noted previously).
• “Introduction to Coaching” is taught by their own full-time coach for employees, Dr. Vik — who sold his Northern California Chiropractic practice to join the team (in the Part 2 video, just before we arrive at Dr. Vik’s office, someone asks Jerry to have Dr. Vik ‘come down’ when he has a moment — there are a lot of word-of-mouth activities going on all the time). Not only did I get my own Zappos Vision planner, I also got a copy of Dr. Vik’s DVD “Taking It to the Next Level” (explained briefly here).

Special thanks to Elizabeth Gregersen who handled all of my arrangements and who was patient with my questions after the fact (here’s Liz and Jerry just having fun — its encouraged to do so). My apologies that it took so long to get this posted (it’s been a steep learning curve to edit/load the videos). If there is any information in the videos that is out of date, please let me know.

For a ‘more professional’ version, check out the ABC Nightline segment.

1. Each year, over 50% of the people in attendance were new to the field and often were there because they’d ‘inherited’ responsibility for a data warehousing initiative, but knew nothing about the industry or the practices.
2. Because of #1, the majority of the attendees were under tremendous pressure to perform. They were looking for recipes — checklists that they could take home and just start working on.

This appears to be indicative of all emerging disciplines/practices. But for Enterprise 2.0, unlike Data Warehousing, the predominant focus is NOT technology. And yet, from where does the funding or focus from such initiatives typically come? This is a much larger issue — one related to obsolete organizational design practices. The reason IT is the most obvious choice for sponsorship is that it is the only organization not vertically challenged — it delivers (or should) only horizontal services to an enterprise — crossing all other departments. Indeed, IT is one of the few organizations that takes on the battle to find common threads across organizations to weave the horizontal lines of the tapestry that holds the business together.

And yet, the approaches needed for E2.0 initiatives are the antithesis of typical IT practices.

1. There are no rules; there are no requirements
   An optimal E2.0 initiative evolves organically (hold that thought for further clarification). E2.0 initiatives are the canary for Business 2.0 — if they die, the business will as well (either absorbed by the larger market or re-emerging anew after an identity meltdown).
2. The goal is not Binary Code
   This is the realm for Design Thinking, not Analytical Thinking (previously noted: end of piece). As Roger Martin alludes to in The Design of Business (starting pg 6) this is an era to shift away from the locked down binary code of repeatability (optimal for machinery) and become more comfortable with the ’squishy’ realm of the heuristic (optimal for capitalizing on human wetware). It doesn’t mean that we abandon the right side of the continuum — mystery…heuristic…algorithm…binary code — but that we shift to the left.
3. Controls are Nooses of Death
   This is the realm of ‘middles’: neither chaos or order, but a powerful, constantly changing space called complexity (think practice of ’science’ not ‘lots of pieces’). IT is still focused on increasing controls to improve results — increasing compliance, embracing defined practices of Project Management, etc. If you’re building a spaceship and lives are at stake, these practices are a must. If you’re running a company in today’s turbulent marketplace, everything that is locked down and fixed prevents the real human capital of the organization from adapting to constantly changing circumstances. There is never an ideal process or system and there will always be exceptions. IT cannot respond fast enough to these changes. That means the flexibility has to be built into the systems. This is not to suggest that controls are abandoned — it simply means that all of the existing controls have to be questioned and likely changed for greater human oversight throughout the organization (managed via a distributed social governance model, not a hierarchy).
4. It’s not about a Blog or a Wiki
   A true sign of a E2.0 initiative destined for failure is one that focuses on the technologies. Certainly there are a variety of technologies that enhance and help to enable E2.0, but even as technologies, they are absolutely ineffective when implemented with a typical IT approach: install them. Blogs, Wikis, Mashups, and other Social Computing mechanisms are elements of a flexible infrastructure. As a solution they have to be architected. This will prove problematic for most IT groups for the same reason that SOA has failed — IT hires ‘drafters’ not ‘architects’. In company after company, the majority of people I’ve met who hold ‘architect’ titles know nothing about real design: they can draft solutions, but not architect them (the problem starts with the job descriptions — check out some postings).

So what IS Enterprise 2.0 focused on? People: tapping the human potential, helping to change the way business gets done by optimizing it not to the systems but to the people. Not shaping the people (via training and documentation) to the systems and the business, but changing the systems and the business to optimize the potential of the people.

Enterprise 2.0 is a mindset, framed by the orders of nature: enabling endless possibilities, organizing simple things in simple ways.

Enterprise 2.0 is about facilitating orderly chaos:

• Minimizing Structure, Optimizing Connections
• Tapping Existing Kinetic Energy
• Celebrating Flaw-Finding and Fixing
• Supporting Rapid Change

How do you get there?

• Truly Utilize Resources
  It’s not a destination — it’s a journey. You’re already on the path: embrace where you stand. First assess whether or not existing resources have access to one another: the people element. Finding people has to be the first priority. Determine the typical scenarios for problem solving and recognize that departments or hierarchies do not hold the answers to business problems/issues: people do. Warning: classic ‘expertise locator’ technologies will likely not be the right answer here.
• Shorten Distances
  Simplify all aspects of ‘doing’ business. Repeatedly ask: What can we stop doing? Leverage what’s working (from the perspective of all individuals impacted, not just those with ‘management’ responsibility to execute) — bypass the rest. From an IT perspective, being successful here the concept of software as we know it goes away. The desktop becomes a collection of functions that can be assembled into sequential processes, but are not locked into place. Existing applications can be tapped, bypassing inefficient UIs and raising the most relevant activities and functions to the ‘top’ (omnipresence). Even two years ago Dion Hinchcliffe introduced the concept of situational software.

• Embrace Organic
  Organic is not chaotic. A palm frond is distinct from a maple leaf. Nature has order, but that order is under rapid cycles of repeated construction and destruction. The question becomes one of determining what structure is necessary to support a specific, unique pattern (purpose), yet does not prevent the ability to adapt to constantly changing conditions — not only to survive, but flourish.
• Shift Focus
  Particularly for IT, the focus shifts from code (developers) to UI (designers). Coders are trained to make things binary; good designers are comfortable with the ’squishiness’ of heuristics. That doesn’t mean developers go away; it means that there should be a 1-to1 ratio of developers and designers. They’re two totally different kinds of mindsets — and while there are unique individuals who can do both, it’s rare that 1) you can find them or 2) you know what to look for and adequately assess. Besides, there’s an important phase of working through the natural ‘dissonance’ that will occur between these two mindsets. This can be lost when resolved in the mind of a single person (or it will just increase work-induced-schizophrenia, ala. stress). The fallacy of paired programming is not in the number, but in the resources and their focus. Pairs should be made up of two different perspectives.
• Shift Thinking
  Design Thinking requires a different approach: it focuses on trying out multiple possibilities (fail fast) to test an algoritm — a problem statement. Don’t think problem=flaw, but problem=mathematical equation. Different algorithms solve different problems. Many solutions fail because they either 1) started with the wrong question (the solution is the answer to the question) or 2) did not adapt to change the question (the problem statement) as more was learned along the way. Our current definition and funding of projects is a key contributor to this fatal flaw.
• Shift Culture
  A company that has been optimized for ‘machine’ design (command and control), will have a culture that reinforces such behaviors. Such a culture will undermine E2.0 potential. It will seek to eliminate the efforts as a ‘foreign body’. A different culture is not a prerequisite, it’s a corequisite. It should evolve as enabled by the other changes. Such cultures have to move from ‘rules’ to ‘guidelines’; from ‘fixed processes’ to ‘governance models’; from binary to heuristic (obvious exceptions will be for those industries and/or business artifacts subject to legislation).

A primary challenge is that we’re so used to operating in ‘binary’ that we attempt to turn everything into linear processes. This is not a linear solution space (in reality, neither is business — we’ve only artificially forced it to be so). Most of these things are codependent — they rely on small changes from the other dimensions to accommodate their own change. This is ‘informed change’ not ‘command and control change’. How is this possible? Social computing — facilitating conversations and exchange of business artifacts that are: transparent, persistent and accessible.

Now we can start the technology discussion…