Social Business Doesn't Mean What You Think It Does, Neither Does Enterprise 2.0

Some time ago Deb Lavoy wrote an interesting post titled 'Social Business doesn't mean what you think it does, neither does Enterprise 2.0'. I just wanted to point you to it. The discussion around the post is interesting.  I also commented on the post. I'll mix it into this post and hopefully you'll read Deb's post and join the conversation.

I like the way Deb links social business to deeper societal and even philosophical movements. I think this is one of the reasons Tapscott c.s. wrote the book 'Macrowikinomics'. W.r.t. philosophy she relates social business to Enlightenment 2.0. I was wondering if we can just say it relates to the current philosophy, postmodernism (- there is no absolute truth, everything is fragmented, deconstructionilism, subjectivism instead of objectivism, etc)?
Extending that thought, we know philosophies come and go (objectivism is followed by an era of subjectivism, then objectivism, etc). I think we are now learning that subjectivism alone won't get us there. Society is showing this. But in social business there's also more and more talk about social business and core business processes, and integrating formal processes and informal networks in organizations. I hope this is showing that we are learning. Because we know from history if we only focus on one side of the truth, the world will sway back the other way to address the other side of the truth for some time.
In short, networks and informal collaboration aren't the whole story, there's always some formal structure. But definitely less structure than we were used to. Because structure isn't the whole story either; networks have always been there as well.

[Request for Input] Control and audit implications for social media

In a couple of weeks I'll be giving a masterclass with prof. Eddy Vaassen about 'Control and audit implications for social media'. Wow, what a title, eh?! This masterclass is part of a large conference in Holland organized by NBA-VRC for accountants and controllers. The topic of this year's conference is Customer 3.0.

I'm working on the slides for the masterclass. And I'm curious what your expectations are when you read the title of the masterclass. What topics should be addressed? What are control and audit implications, according to you? Do control, audit and social media relate? If so, please explain.

Of course we'll share our slides as soon as they're ready. Feedback on those slides is welcome, as always.

More Structure in Knowledge Work

A while back Thomas Davenport wrote an interesting McKinsey report 'Rethinking knowledge work: A strategic approach'. It's a thought-provoking piece. It goes against the trend to say knowledge workers should be left alone, they're smart and know what to do. Davenport says we should provide more structure to knowledge work. Providing knowledge workers "well-defined context of tasks and deliverables".

It's time for companies to develop a strategy for knowledge work - one that not only provides a clearer view of the types of information that workers need to do their jobs but also recognizes that the application of technology across the organization must vary considerably, according to the task different knowledge workers perform.

Davenport clearly also looks at the down-side of the free-access model for knowledge work. Are all knowledge workers really up to their task? Davenport clearly says 'no'. There are different levels of knowledge work that we should be open to. He relates to the case-management systems. "Case management can create value whenever some degree of structure or process can be imposed upon information-intensive work. Until recently, structured-provision approaches have been applied mostly to lower-level information tasks that are repetitive, predictable, and thus easier to automate."

I think Davenport is onto something here. What I see is that the IT would like to automate everything in heavy ERP-like tools. Everything is a process, everything can be structured, everything is digital, they seem to say. We know this drives knowledge workers crazy. What are they to do when they run into an exception? What happens when the process changes?

So, there's room between free-access tools to support knowledge work and tools that manufacturing-esk processes. I think the IT Flower shows this well. So, Davenport is wondering: where are the tools that support transactional work? Work that is not completely structured or unstructured. He says "the greatest potential for productivity improvements involve bringing more structured knowledge to workplaces and processes". And: "The key issue ... is to decide which aspects of the relevant process could benefit from more structured technologies and processes and which should be left largely untouched."

I'm not sure if "the greatest potential" is there. I think there's also huge potential in getting knowledge workers to use social tools in the organization. And use them productively. But there definitely is potential here. There's not only potential here for certain types of work, like someone working on files in the government as opposed to a PhD researcher. There's also potential for the knowledge worker who's work consists of different types of tasks. More and less structured work. The big productivity gain is helping knowledge workers switch between these tasks, I think.

What are your thoughts on Davenport's ideas? How does it relate to your daily practice?

Is an Organization a Hierarchy and/or a Network?

Back to work after a wonderful vacation in the US! Really enjoyed being there. My sister lives there. We went to the Gulf of Mexico with them and stayed there for a week. And we also travelled to Washington D.C. Went to the Museums in D.C. (we had already 'done' the monuments in a previous trip), went hiking in Shenadoah National Park, etc.
Now back to work. Worked through my email, feeds and tweets. One post I saved to read was this interesting post by prof. John Kotter, Hierarchy and Network: Two Structures, One Organization. A must-read for all social media and social business people! Lots of discussion there. I also commented on the post. I wrote:

Wow, lots of discussion here. I liked the post as well. I blogged about this topic a couple of times. I agree with some of the comments made stating the hierarchy and business is older than the 19th century. I do think you can say the 19th century made hierarchy the way to go. I think this is one of the reasons social media is so popular. All of a sudden we are seeing the importance of networks. But as some commenters wrote: a network does not exclude a hierarchy. How do businesses start: usually as a network, a community. After growing some usually hierarchy is made explicit. But the hierarchy usually was there from the start if you analyse the network. Arie de Geus addresses this deeply in his book 'The Living Company'.
So, I think all companies have hierarchy and networks. The problem is most companies only focus on and support the hierarchy. The network is hardly supported. Just look at the amount of money that is put into tools support business process automation... I find this one of the reason why internal use of social media is so interesting. Not to say business process automation is useless. But to say that's good, but we must also support the networks to improve business processes (and vice versa).

What I meant with my blog posts relating to this topic are these two posts, for instance. Also relate to Dave Gray's post 'The Future is Podular'. Fits perfectly next to Kotter's post. Interesting post by Kotter, don't you think?!

Enterprise 2.0 and Business Processes #e20s

Some notes from the open space about Enterprise 2.0 and business processes:

If you don't impact the business process with Enterprise 2.0 you won't unlock value.

If you introduce a new tool, you can't make them use it. Tools should fit in their daily routine. If not, users will easily reject it.

There were differences about using force to get people to adopt Enterprise 2.0 tooling. Most said, Don't use force, make it voluntary. But it does depend on the type of e2.0 project. For instance, an example was given about social project management. In this case you agree to do project management in this way. But with communities using (a bit of) force is restrictive.

Helping people use e2.0 tools and integrating them in their work processes requires patience and lots of training. Sometimes you even have to start by explaining what a webbrowser is. Focus on the e2.0 concepts not on the tools. Most people understand the concepts better than the tools... Enterprise 2.0 projects almost always start as push, not pull. Start by solving daily problems. Because most people don't ask for e2.0 concepts and tools.

Context is a key word in this area. Linking people (expertise), information, processes and tools. Formal processes, information need context to understand them.

We also see a role for e2.0 in the definition of new formal processes and improve them continuously. Basically most of us are unconsciously looking for improvements to business processes.

Social tools and formal business tools are not or hardly integrated. (At least we don't have examples... We do see vendors moving into that space, like SAP.) People are not middleware. Extra tools are see as a barrier for knowledge workers. E.g. they live in their email. Every extra tool for sharing, storing, etc is seen as a hassle.

Also see Emanuelle Quintarelli's notes here.

Enterprise 2.0 The Book by @amcafee, A Review

Some time ago I said: Vacation First. I wanted to share my review of professor Andrew McAfee's book Enterprise 2.0 before I went on vacation. That didn't work out. I wish I could have written this review sooner, because the sooner you read this book the better. I'll tell you why.

Andrew McAfee coined the term 'enterprise 2.0' (in 2006) and has been one of the leading thinkers in the space of applying web 2.0 concepts and tools (or 'collaborative media' as McAfee likes to call them) to the workplace. This book summarizes his thinking over the years. Of course he's been blogging and speaking about this topic. So I was wondering if this book would bring me new insights. Well it did. And to me this is why I love books. You know thinking about the topic you're reading about in a book won't stop as soon as the book has been published. But a book does give you a summary of past thinking and concepts for future thinking. And all that in a limited amount of pages (instead of the endless amount of Internet pages...).

I like the way the book starts. It could have started by describing the new social tools and their underlying concepts. But it doesn't. Chapter 2 starts with several real-life cases we can all relate to. These cases make us reflect on information sharing and gathering problems in organizations. How can be solve them? What is the real underlying issue?

The next chapter goes on to explain the big shift. Is Web 2.0 really a paradigm shift or is it an incremental change? Or even just a hype? And how does this shift relate to businesses? Will it have effect only on the Internet or will it also change the way we do business?

Only then does McAfee go back to the issues mentioned in chapter 2. This interesting chapter explains the research on 'tie strength', pointing to Granovetter's work a.o. (which you should read as well!). Subsequently McAfee picks up every case of ch. 2 and shows how Enterprise 2.0 concepts and tools addresses the needs, whereas 1.0 solutions couldn't do the trick. I think this chapter will be an 'Aha moment' for many readers, definitely for those that are new to these concepts.

This book contains information for people in different stages of understanding and implementing Enterprise 2.0. The book describes 'technologies and technology based communities' like blogs, Facebook, etc. For many there is nothing new here. But what I like about the book is McAfee's honesty. McAfee describes how he got interested in Web 2.0 and how his thinking about Enterprise 2.0 started. He didn't 'get it' from the start, but slowly and steadily started to understand and research it. I think this applies to most people in this space. Almost none can say: I understood it from the start. Most experts in this field started out as sceptics. But then made the leap and started blogging, for instance, and by using social media started to understand and be excited about them. This fact is inspiring to all who just learned about Web 2.0 or Enterprise 2.0. It will hopefully get them started more quickly.

This also relates to one of the last chapters of the book: Red Herrings and Long Hauls. Many think Enterprise 2.0 is an instant success. You just set up a (micro)blog and your organization will change and speed up dramatically. McAfee warns us for this and clearly shows we should organize for the long haul. I think this also underlines the need for management and strategic choices to reap the long term benefits of Enterprise 2.0. Enterprise 2.0 requires deep changes in thinking about organizations, management, employees (users) and tools. Take time to help the organization understand these new concepts and tools.

Furthermore he also points to interesting research telling us that new tools have to be 10 times better than the tools we're using for them to be adopted. So, how much better is microblogging than email? Patience is necessary. Evangelizing, demonstrating, training and explaining as well.

This chapter also addresses the main obstacles (red herrings) to Enterprise 2.0 adoption. One topic I'd like to mention here is McAfee's research shows that "most people know how to act professionally in job-related environments, including digital ones". And therefore he has hardly seen Enterprise 2.0 adoption lead to security breaches like employees sharing IP sensitive information. He also points to the CIA using Enterprise 2.0 concepts and tools. They concluded "that the benefits of better and wider sharing of intelligence information outweigh the risks."

I love the way McAfee advises us to work on the adoption of Enterprise 2.0 concepts and tools. He starts out by saying we should connect with believers. Employees already convinced of the importance of social media and their use for organizations. Have them help educate and evangelize. Another important point he makes is to connect to the existing tool set. We use email a lot. So start there.

This book definitely calls for a follow-up! Topics for the next book could be about the following:

1. There's lots of discussion about how the social tools relate to formal business and information processes. How this can be done and companies are actually doing it, is a great topic to systematically write down in a book. This would extend what McAfee says about 'in the flow' and 'above the flow' on page 184.
2. There's some debate about what comes after Web 2.0. O'Reilly and Battelle call it 'Web Squared'. What does this mean for Enterprise 2.0? What would Enterprise Squared be? Or is it already there? Lots of thinking is being done on this topic as well. Again, this thinking could be summarized in a book as well.

This is not a complete summary. I picked out things I found very interesting. Just to show you I really enjoyed reading this book. I have advised many to read this book and hope this review will get you to do so as well.

Thank you for writing this book and sharing your insights, Andrew McAfee!

Note: This review has also been posted on Amazon in the review section of the book.

Vacation First

I was planning to write two more posts today and this evening, but I decided they can wait. I really wanted to write about two things that I'm really hyped up about:

1. Andrew McAfee's book Enterprise 2.0. Great read, great book. Really good overview of the Enterprise 2.0 landscape for people that are new to this interesting field and even for the experienced early adopters. I'll share my review in September.
2. Lots of debate has popped up quite recently about Enterprise 2.0 and business processes. I was working on a post, based on all the older and newer posts that I've collected. Great stuff and very deep thinking going on there.

But 'vacation first'. I'm heading to Germany, near Trier, and hope to be there with my family. Really looking forward to it!

So, blogging and tweeting will be slow! See you later.

Is Your Organization a Process or a Network?

Is your organization a process (several operational steps to get things done) or a network (smart knowledge workers connecting to get things done)? Or is it both?

As an information architect I'm often confronted with this question. Usually not explicitly, but in a more implicit way. From an information process perspective you hear people talking about structured and unstructured information processes, for instance. I've shared my thinking about this topic in the past and I'm working on a longer post about this subject (to be published soon). I thought I'd start with something different. Three pictures to show the different views on organizations and how they relate. I'd love to hear you thoughts about these pictures.

What I see is managers and business process specialists look at organizations in this way:

So, the organization is put together as discrete, operational steps moving packets of information (the gray boxes) forward. (Loops back into the organization exist but are not in the picture).

Most employees see the organization in a different way. They see the organization as a network of people that have certain information or knowledge helping them get things done. Employees find the operational steps OK for very operational tasks, like time registration, but not for their core (knowledge) tasks. This could look like this:

I understand both approaches. Depending on how you look at (part of) an organization you see clearly defined steps or a chaotic network.

So my conviction is both are true. Both approaches exist in practice. If so, the pictures above should be combined. It could look something like this:

The interesting thing is the amount of time and money being invested in these approaches. Generally speaking you see lots of time and money being pumped into improving the first approach. Aligning and reengineering business processes, rolling out an ERP system, etc. The other approach is usually just there. It seems to be taken for granted. It's supported by email and more and more by platforms like Sharepoint. Some companies are also pushing social media into this space. In any case it is seen as infrastructure and investments are low.

This is strange to me because the largest part of the organization is organized as a community and network. People with a certain passion and expertise connect and collaborate to get work done. Of course there are operational processes in companies. And if they can be automated, we should do this quickly. However the amount of time and money being put into these operational improvements is, to me, disproportional to the amount of time being spent by knowledge workers on non-operational work.

Do you agree? Do you see both of these views in the company you work for? And do you take them as they are: related to each other? I'd love to hear your thoughts.