Organisatorische Effizienz via Social Software

Via Robert Basic und der Arbeitsgruppe Kooperationssysteme: “Social Software in Unternehmen auf dem Vormarsch”, siehe Transkripts (.doc)/Podcasts (.mp3) vom halbjährlichen Lotus-Update (“Lotus Executive Panel Session”), u.a. mit Ed Brill. Ein paar gute Zitate, eines davon stammt von Mike Rhodin (Lotus GM and Key Lotus Executives) und dreht sich um die Einführung und den ROI von Social Software im Unternehmen:

I get into this particular question on the cultural transformation aspects of social software in the enterprise quite a bit with senior executives that I talk to. What I’m finding is actually a bifurcation of interest here, where, in the senior executive ranks, they get it. The understand it. In many cases they get it and understand it because they have teenage children or college age children that are using these technologies in the consumer space. I’ll tell you that when I first brought forward the idea for Connections inside IBM, the first person that jumped all over the promise of this was Sam Palmisano, right, so it was jumped on from the top down. He’s got teenaged kids. He understands what’s going on. He’s intrigued by it. This concept of community, the unlocking of ideas across an organization, is viewed by CEOs across the globe as one of the most important strategic imperatives for them to deal with, right.

There are cultures in organizations, around the world that are heavily process laden that are based on information secrecy and (compartmentalization), as opposed to openness. What I believe and what many senior business leaders, around the world, believe is that that business model is going to come under increasing competitive pressure in the future. That way of doing business is going to become very difficult as environments in the competitive world change and these social networks start to unlock the power of ideas, within organizations, so that companies can truly be innovative regardless of where the ideas come from, within the organization. It truly flattens the organization, brings the ideas forward and enables true collaboration in ways that we’ve never seen before in organizations.

Robert dazu:

[…] Viel interessanter ist das mit den organisatorischen Effizienzüberlegungen, die sich iW auf die Wettbewerbsfähigkeit beziehen. Ist das bei einem von Euch Thema im Unternehmen?

Ist zu oft (noch) kein wirkliches Thema, sollte es aber sein. Eine Quantifizierung der Vorteile oder eines “Return on Investment” (ROI) ist natürlich nicht leicht – entsprechend reserviert sind viele Entscheider noch gegenüber dem Einsatz von Social Software / Web 2.0 / Enterprise 2.0 / Office 2.0 u.a. Instrumenten.

Es stellt sich die grundsätzliche Frage, ob es überhaupt sinnvoll ist, ROI-Analysen und -Begründungen anzustellen, wenn die (positiven) Auswirkungen der zu beurteilenden Instrumente noch nicht abzusehen sind. Social Software ist eine disruptive Innovation, deren Effekte auf die Produktivität von Unternehmen und ihren Wissensarbeitern noch nicht zu überblicken sind. Eine alternative Argumentation setzt daher mehr auf Fallstudien, Erfahrungsberichte und “Lessons Learned” um Einsichten in die positiven Effekte und organisatorischen Änderungen zu fördern.

Leading and Creating Collaboration in Decentralized Organizations

Partly note to myself, partly note to those readers who don’t abhor a good research paper now and then: This looks interesting, in HBS First Look (of May 29):

Leading and Creating Collaboration in Decentralized Organizations” by Heather M. Caruso and Todd Rogers with Professor Max Bazerman

From the introduction:

Many employees note that, in decentralized organizations, it is harder to deal with other divisions or departments of their organization than it is to negotiate with outside suppliers or customers. In ordinary cases, this intraorganizational coordination failure which can cost substantial sums of money. […]

Often, instances of coordination failure stem from the failure to appropriately structure the organization around the key interdependencies within the organization – whether that suggests organizing by function (e.g., sales, marketing, manufacturing, engineering, etc.), by product group, or by region. Yet, even when organizations are able to design divisions around the appropriate dimensions, there will always be a need to integrate information across the resulting units. We focus this paper on improving information coordination across these organizational units to maximize organizational effectiveness.

While social software is not explicitly mentioned, I think that it has potential for the described kinds of organizational problems and tasks: Effectively supporting an organizational design thinking that envisions emergent, boundary-crossing and adaptive collaboration.

Here’s the full pdf of the article.

Do only young people get Web 2.0?

One might think yes when reading this report in TechWeb (“Younger Workers Demanding Web 2.0 Tech On The Job”).

I am not sure what to think of this line of reasoning, because I’ve seen both enough “old” people who get Web 2.0 and vice versa. Physical age is a dumb metric, especially when it is applied to knowledge workers etc. So judging employee’s ability to get Enterprise 2.0 by their age, is just like, well, judging books by their cover …

Moreover I am not sure whether I like this article for the analysis and the actions it recommends. While I am all for respecting IT governance, social software in the enterprise must be approached differently (as it’s not so much a technological than a social shift). So asking for …

IT managers better start preparing to deal with Web 2.0 technologies, like wikis, blogs, mashups, and social networking sites, because sooner or later — and it’ll probably be sooner — they’re going to have to deal with it.

And that means adopting technologies, managing them, and securing the network from the people who use them.

… is leading the wrong way.

For one, it’s not sooner or later, it’s now.

And it’s not about technology.

And “securing the network from the people who use them” sounds weird, they’re your employees not your enemies.

McAfee and Davenport debate on the value of Enterprise 2.0

Dan Farber reports on the McAfee / Davenport debate he moderated, basically noting that …

[they] agreed that Enterprise 2.0 is in its infancy, but disagreed on the potential for it to transform how people work in corporations.

And this is where the trouble (and the interesting stuff) begins, so lay your hands on the transcript that John Eckman has, view the streamed video or get it as a mp4-download).

I will elaborate more on this in one of my next posts, now I’m all busy …

Web 2.0 enabled knowledge worker productivity

I’ve noted the excellent “Ask Charlie” slideshow on Enterprise 2.0 before. This seems to have triggered a round of look-alikes, take e.g. this slideshow on web 2.0 enabled knowledge worker productivity and work styles (“A new way to define a productive worker”):

Well, yes, this is worthy pointing out even when it’s not in the line of the burstyness vs. busyness discussion (which I’ve really liked) – oh, and just ignore the spotty spelling here and there.

Supporting Business Development with a Wiki

Via Stewart Mader comes notice of an article in FastCompany on how Disney uses wikis in internal business model innovation projects (well, not all WDI employees seem so content as the folks of the digital-media department, but that’s another story …).

This is an excellent description of how a wiki can be the information, collaboration, and social hub of a group. Creating a directory of staff profiles helps people hone their wiki editing skills, tell others about themselves, and become more deeply connected to the rest of the community on the wiki. The flexibility of the wiki shows in the creation of that “Cool Stuff We’ve Done This Year” section, because people can start by informally listing things they’ve done, then go back and add descriptions, links, images, video, etc. and pretty soon they’ve built a better, more accurate, and naturally built report on what they’ve accomplished.

I like the use case and rationale of the people at Disney, this is obviously a good little case study. I wouldn’t place too much focus on the “maverick spirit aspects” anyway. Adaptivity and room for “emergent uses” are attractive enough – especially for the support of (business model) innovators.