Via Frank Hamm bin ich auf diesen Vortrag von Sören Stamer von Coremedia bei der next07 aufmerksam geworden:
Lohnend für alle, die an der Einführung von Enterprise 2.0 Konzepten Interesse haben. Die weiteren Vorträge der next07 sind hier zusammengetragen.
IBM has released detailed information on Lotus Connections, features, pricing and all, see
here for more, maybe check out my past notes and pointers.
IBM Lotus Connections V1.0 empowers users to share and refine innovative ideas and helps you execute tasks more quickly by using dynamic networks of coworkers, partners, and customers. Lotus Connections delivers the following essential components of social software that meet the security, scalability, and integration requirements of a growing business:
* Profiles enable you to quickly find the people you need by searching across your organization using keywords that help identify expertise or current projects.
* Communities allow you to create, find, join, and work with communities of people who share a common responsibility or area of expertise.
* Blogs help you to present your ideas and receive feedback while learning from the experience of others.
* Dogear allows you to save your bookmarks, either as private or shared, so you and others can quickly find information.
* Activities component empowers you to organize your work, plan next steps, and easily tap your expanding professional network to help execute your everyday deliverables faster.
Norbert Gronau hat in der FTD Enable Beilage einen Artikel zu (2.0-)Ansätzen im Wissensmanagement verfasst. Der kurze Beitrag kann naürlich die Herausforderungen für “Wissensmanagement 2.0” nur kurz anreißen, gut gefallen hat mir aber die deutliche Absage an Versuche Wissensmanagement (informations-)technologisch anzugehen.
Den Versuch KMDL (Knowledge Modelling and Description Language) als Analyse- bzw. Implementierungswerkzeug für Wissensmanagement 2.0 zu positionieren sehe ich dagegen kritisch. Aus meiner Sicht finden die wichtigsten Prozesse der Wissensarbeit in informellen Strukturen statt, die besser mit Werkzeugen wie Social Network Analysis angegangen werden.
Interessanter sind dann Instrumente zur Förderung des persönlichen, individuellen Wissensmanagements in komplexen sozialen Strukturen. Gerade Social Software lässt sich hier in das organisationale Wissensmanagement einpassen.
Ohnehin wandelt sich Wissensmanagement zunehmend von IT- und werkzeugorientierten hin zu personen- bzw. organisationsorientierten Ansätzen: Social Software ist die logische Infrastruktur für veränderte Strukturen, betriebliche (Informations-)technologien, Unternehmenskulturen und Mitarbeiter.
Es ist dabei empfehlenswert, personen-, d.h. mitarbeiterorientierte von “kulturorientierten” Maßnahmen zu unterscheiden, und das Konzept (und den Ansatz von Implementierungsvorhaben mit Zielrichtung Wissensarbeit) entsprechend zu erweitern: Social Software wird dann die Infrastruktur für ein zukunftsfähiges Wissensmanagement, das Wissensarbeit, wie bspw. die vielfältigen täglichen Interaktions- und Kommunikationsprozesse, unterstützt und verbessert.
In diesem Zusammenhang spielt dann auch wieder der Beitrag von Norbert Gronau seine Stärken aus: die Betonung der Integration von Wissensmanagement in die alltägliche Arbeit.
Interesse am Einsatz von Social Software? Hier das Kontaktformular.
Via Luis Suarez two videos on Lotus Connections, and its relation with knowledge management. The second video is a bit fluffy and stylish … but this might be OK, as long as it helps to demonstrate the potential of social software in the enterprise and gets “some discussions going as to where they can prove their own business value to knowledge workers or not”.
and
In the meantime Luis has shared more information on the workings of IBM Lotus Connections, Lotus Quickr, Lotus Notes 8 Beta 2 and Lotus Notes 8 Demo (“A Whole Lot More than Just Another E-Mail Client”).
Some days ago I noted (much too short) Accenture’s efforts to introduce web 2.0 concepts into their corporate intranet, following a report from IT Business.
Now I’ve read Mike Gottas take on the news, where he basically welcomes the new addition to the “social software business case collection”, while pointing out that:
professional services has always been a pathfinder industry segment when it comes to early adoption of certain technology.
because
Connecting with other people in organizations that essentially “sell know how” is a perfect environment for introducing tools that help with information sharing, communication, collaboration and community-building (e.g., KM).
Yet he warns to see this case as a false positive, something I partially agree with, if only because it’s straight and normal business of IT consultancies to explore “the edges” and to prepare answers before clients ask.
But while exploring the edges of changing technologies is for sure no business any CIO engages in, they might ask Accenture (or other consultants, hint) for advice regarding this “enterprise 2.0”-thing they’ve heard about. So, I wonder whether this will turn out to be just another “case study” or the start of something bigger (like all the other consultancies marketing their very own efforts and experiences …).
Andrew McAfee on the adoption challenges of enterprise 2.0, when web2.0-style tools are seen as superfluous, must-not-have and an “unproductive thing to do”:
people who use the new tools heavily – who post frequently to an internal blog, edit the corporate wiki a lot, or trade heavily in the internal prediction market — will be perceived as not spending enough time on their ‘real’ jobs
[…]
In environments that value ‘busyness’ enterprise 2.0 enthusiasts can be seen as laggards, goof-offs, and people who don’t have either enough to do or enough initiative to find more real work to do.
This is not surprising, as we all know that this organizational pathology of “you’ve got to be busy” is both widespread and (ironically) utterly unproductive …
Yet, he makes perfectly clear that especially knowledge based organizations can profit from enterprise 2.0 oriented collaboration support, so when introduction is not easy, management guidance and leadership is are even more essential.
Companies that are full of knowledge workers and that have built cultures that value busyness face a potentially sharp dilemma when it comes to E2.0. These companies stand to benefit a great deal if they can build emergent platforms for collaboration, information sharing, and knowledge creation. But they may be in a particularly bad position to build such platforms not because potential contributors are too busy, but because they don’t want to be seen as not busy enough.
And even if the leaders in such companies sincerely want to exploit the new tools and harness the collective intelligence of their people, they might have a tough time convincing the workforce that busyness is no longer the ne plus ultra. Corporate cultures move slowly and with difficulty, and it will take a lot more than a few memos, speeches, and company retreats to convince people that it’s a smart career idea, rather than a poor one, to contribute regularly and earnestly to E2.0 platforms.
Besides, this illustrates that enterprise 2.0 tools and methods must be intertwined and knitted into daily work processes and routines to ease adoption – when they are added-on superficially, one runs into exactly the problems Andrew notes.
Update: Marcel de Ruiter adds his thoughts to the “no time” excuse that threatens to keep participation low, arguing that the benefits of social software for an individual knowledge-worker should be pointed out more. I second that and observed that similar issues have been part of failed past knowledge management efforts, mainly those that focussed on corporate (and down to group) uses, both in the design of knowledge management solutions and in the design of implementation and change projects (“we the company know what is needed”).
So, please, don’t let us make the same mistakes again, start bottom-up (and add top-down support as much as possible). This CEO and CIO support is essential, because strategic issues are touched and need to be sorted out. One example is that it’s mandatory for the acceptance of internal social networking, to facilitate the transfer and exchange of corporate social networks between different employers (you know, this is no longer a world of “IBM now, IBM forever”). While this is all about individual benefit trumping official corporate policy, it’s also deeply logical as value creation processes cross inter-organizational frontiers anyway all the time.
