18 posts tagged “enterprise2.0”

There’s a growing shift in the conversation around E2.0 away from the technologies and on to the culture change that will unlock the value of social/networking systems.

You would think that persuading the Board about the merits of a more open, transparent culture isn’t too uphill a task, especially when you consider the alternative and the negative impact on the bottom line. Ross Dawson writes in Trends in the Living Network of networked organisations, in which being more effective at ad-hoc communiation and collaboration underpins organisatinoal performance.

Susan Scrupski's post Corporate Antisocial Behaviour: the Enemy is Us refers to five reasons why projects fail, and notes: "The technologies we had prior to web 2.0 would enable employees to 'speak up.' Email, telephones, even notes passed under the door could have prevented huge cost overruns and errors, but technology – old or new – won’t fix these problems."

Whether it is inside or outside the enterprise, one message does not fit all anymore. So should internal communicators use the new web to lead a cultural revolution, or to feed an effort to make the company more open that rides on the coat-tails of another project?

It depends. Assuming you accept the need to change your culture, then a corporate rebranding effort would provide a great opportunity to kick-start what Susan calls 'social process re-engineering'. But rebrandings do not happen often.

For a more likely opportunity, any significant project that requires upfront change management and/or communication input - and to the converted, that would be all of them - could be used by internal communicators as a trojan mouse.

Andrew Keen writes, "We all now know [Web2.0's] technological strengths and weaknesses, its cultural accomplishments and failures, its economic appearance and reality." Lead or feed doesn't matter as long as efforts are made to change people's day-to-day views on the value of effective communication, and corporate communicators should by now have an idea of the what the new we means for them, their role and, crucially, their company culture.

I learn by discovering and then mastering what I discover. Both steps are made easier - and more fun - if guided. As we grow up, those guides include parents, teachers, friends and colleagues.

As a consultant, guided discovery helps me form an accurate picture of the client's world, make predictions, formulate explanations, imagine alternatives and design plans. And now I have two new guides in John Smythe and Jerome Reback, who joined us this week.

John is author of The CEO: Chief Engagement Officer and a leading light in the area of engagement, while Jerome is co-author of Corporate reputation: Managing the new strategic asset. John has a high profile, and there are clips of him in action here and here.

I first met John last summer, just as his book was coming out. At that time, a bit like a recent post from Sue Dewhurst, I thought there was a bandwagon pushing 'employee engagement'. It was the communication industry's equivalent of 'Web2.0' - everyone was using the term yet there was no consensus about meaning or relevance.

Just as social media and enterprise2.0 start to (slowly) normalise, the co-option of 'engagement' means there now is space to, with my new guides, look a little deeper at the connections joining business, communication and engagement. And continue to learn.

Never underestimate the value of occasionally revisiting first principles. When it comes to social media in business - aka Enterprise2.0/E2.0 - then here's a quick primer:

• Blogging - Debbie Weil video interviewed at BlogWorld Expo
• Wikis - new research on managing wikis in the workplace
• RSS - or really simple syndication

Take these basic ingredients and sketch out a strategy. If you need a pointer, then check this collaboration tools and technolgies video from BNet, and Dell's experience with social media after they 'stopped thinking like a customer'.

Seth Godin shines a light on How to create a great website. It could apply to a social media/enterprise2.0 strategy, with a little refining:

1. Get the organisation out of the way, lead by example
2. Try different systems alone and together, make mistakes fast, learn, move on.
3. Add value - help make connections where there were none before
4. What works, works, theory is irrelevant
5. Have just a little patience
6. Ignore metrics for now
7. Don't jump on the latest system bandwagon
8. Reach out at the right time to your manager/techies
9. Hire a professional if needed but get the internal evangelists on board
10. Don't just stand there - do something

Getting your CEO on your side when presenting a social media policy for the company will make or break your plan. There are many examples of CEOs who have grasped the opportunity for their company and even themselves. They know that there is a coming generational clash and want to make sure that they are not seen as a relic from the 1960s.

So what nightmares could keep your CEO awake when you present a social media/enterprise2.0 utopia?

• Is social media in the enterprise is a good thing or a bad thing
• Will it waste time and lower productivity?
• What's the quickest way to get a ROI (and have a negative credibility balance)?
• Does my company need a social media policy? (props Liam)

Debbie Weil, author of The Corporate Blogging Book, interviews Ted Leonsis, former head of AOL. She asks Ted why don't more CEOs blog? Ted thinks it is to do with:

1. Lack of appreciation of the power of listening to consumers
2. Fear of being put out there in the blogosphere
3. A lack of prioritization of activities

But story telling can be powerful, and internally and externally, people listen to the CEO, especially if they are prepared to loosen control just a little.

Yes, the company's approach can go a little pear-shaped. But trying and getting it just a bit right is incredibly beneficial. After all, As Niall's Digipalooza report on David Muir from WPP is relevant internally and externally I think when it concludes:

Is Enterprise2.0 for every business?

It is not difficult to find examples where it works.

Yet Nassim Taleb points out in The Black Swan that "a series of corroborative facts is not necessarily evidence...It is misleading to build a general rule from observed facts."

An example of social media and business a little at odds (at a stretch, what Taleb calls 'negative empiricism') was recently provided by Lucy Kellaway's agony aunt column in the Financial Times: How can I turn down my boss's Facebook invitation?

While I agree that, in general, all generalisations are untrue, the responses to this little quandary provided hope that more people see a difference between social media and E2.0, and that even Facebook could work for business.

Social media has not tipped because way too many corporations still have a top down, hierarchical approach to communications that is not conducive to allowing an inclusive conversation to grow. This despite my belief that:

• No culture can live if it attempts to be exclusive. (Ghandi)
• A culture is made - or destroyed - by its articulate voices. (Ayn Rand)

Since corporations get the internal communications their culture deserves, what elements of a corporate culture would give E2.0 traction?

1. Trust is a good start - if you trust your employees, let them open up and form a community. E2.0 will enable the internal 'market to converse again, as people tell one another the truth about products and companies and their own desire.' (Cluetrain Manifesto)
2. Innovative - you don't need to explain the strength of weak ties to a truly innovative company. [Update 06/10/07: Euan states The Obvious]
3. Efficient - show me a company that is proud of wasting time, effort, money.

As in most companies, the C-suite can set the tone for the culture across their corporation - whatever its size -  whether it's a CEO or a CIO.

E2.0 is not about the technology. It's about culture: connections, conversations and community.

The impact of of social media cannot be quantified yet. Attempts have been made - see here, here, and here - but as with many forms of internal communication, some things are just immesureable.

E2.0 champions will have to be like George Bernhard Shaw's tailor: "The only man who behaved sensibly was my tailor; he took my measurement anew every time he saw me, while all the rest went on with their old measurements and expected them to fit me."

Does this mean that E2.0 will not be taken seriously by business until some return on investment is proven? Unlikely.

In traditional terms, the investment required to get a social media strategy off the ground is between slim and none. The tools are free. Time is required - which, of course, costs. And a strategy. So what about that return?

Well, if social media is about conversations, and making connections where there were no connections before, then for now we need to look at a different kind of ROI - return on influence. See here and here. Like all successful concepts - this is simple, relevant and understandable.

Extensions of this approach include measuring relative ROI and relationships. Also, some harder, technical metrics exist, such as here and here.

So you have soft and some emerging hard metrics. Yet Andrew McAfee, father of Enterprise2.0, cautioned at a conference against attempting to "justify the adoption of the tools solely in terms of ROI. Early estimates are likely to be contentious. He instead suggests that the focus should be on telling the story of what they do. This will appeal to decision makers who make their judgments on factors beyond ROI."

At the end of the day, the E2.0 champions know social media is about culture and not meausres at this stage. They also know, like the savvy tailor, that it just feels right.

Life could not be better for internal communicators. Yes, budgets are low, demands are high, measures are scarce and information overload is abundant. Enter social media. As Hugh MacLeod says, "even the smartest people I know in this space have little idea about what's going to happen next...we're basically making it up as we go along. But that's what makes it so exciting."

Yet many internal communicators are defensive, either unconvinced or uncertain about what to do - something I witnessed myself earlier this year at a conference and the sad conclusion reached by Melcrum again this month.

If it's fear or lack of interest, then "the answer lies in trial and error and motivation and in overcoming the fear that makes us avoid the topic in the first place," says Seth Godin.

So, what's an internal communicator to do?

Besides the latest pointers from, say Forrester or McKinsey, and musing on some questions, the one practical piece of advice is:

• Try it out  - your opinion will count for more based on experience. No harm, no foul.

To move on your one-person fact-finding mission and into the company:

1. Get a little senior support
2. Start virally - social media is more culture change than technology, and can be easy
3. Build bridges across your company
4. Think big

Internal communicators are at the leading edge of E2.0 - more so than the geeks. If you are unsure or unconvinced then you need to find out how E2.0 can help your company.

Enterprise2.0 will not go mainstream until Microsoft, IBM, Sun and Google come together. Fat chance? They already seem to skirting around the edges of late. As Steve Larsen said to Shel Israel @Demo; "Constraint spawns creativity."

The E2.0 constraint is  the fear, uncertainty and doubt that the agents of calcification are using to delay the inevitable. Meanwhile, the behemoths sense an all-out land grab may not be a zero-sum game. Enter open source.

Gartner says that open source is impossible to avoid. That will bring the behemoths together and that will deliver Enterprise2.0 solutions that the vast majority of companies will see as the future of choice. For now, as uplifting as the E2.0 success stories collated by Bill Ives are, it is only the start of the beginning, as all these examples are despite what happening with the big guns.

Microsoft may finally have woken up, although it might be ganged up on by the others (and copying them) while tryng to deal with an operating system that is, says Hamish Newlands, a "late, bloated and unpopular failure".

Meanwhile IBM is giving away Symphony to rival Office, Google is some way off from a PowerPoint alternative, though it shows it's social creds with Shared Stuff, and there's excitement about the Flock social browser from Firefox.

If open source can get them main players to come together, maybe we can soon look back at some point in the future and say that that was the tipping point for E2.0.