Some notes from the breakout about the Future of the Enterprise 2.0 Manager Role #e20s

Breakout participants: Bart Schutte, Cordelia Krooss, Jean-Yves Huwart and myself.

I thought I'd share some of my notes about the breakout and continued discussion we had about the role of the Enterprise 2.0 Manager, now and in the future. The discussion started where we left off after Cordelia presented her vision on this role. One of the main discussion points was whether we will need a e2.0 manager in the future organization (organization 2.0, as Cordelia called it).

The notes and statements are not my own, but are a collection of what we shared in our breakout.

• When 2.0 principles are pervasive in the organization we don’t need the e2.0 champion. But doesn’t it depend on the type of organization? Does it change all organizations fundamentally? Does it apply to all businesses?
• Transparency and externalization are business trends. E2.0 tools give the company a means to relate to these trends.
• Organizational levels and structures will continue to exist, but there importance will change. 
• There will always be a tension between the human side and the capital market side of organizations (leading to hierarchy, control, shareholder importance).
• E2.0 brings us back to what organizations used to be: a collections of humans with a certain goal. So humans are important (again).
• A survey says employees leave the company because of their boss in 70% of the cases.
• Do people do what is good by themselves, can the organization always organize themselves?
• E.g. not all people blog or tweet about their work. Why not? Do we really all want to be an intrapeneur?
• We are coming to except a human as a human. Both is true: there are entrepeneurs/automonous thinking people and people that are not geared this way and are happy as it is.
• We lost some of the humanity of business (more and more pressure, also at school). But we’re learning the importance of humans for the company. There will be more and more focus on the human. Collaboration will become integral, but the focus on the human will need to be paid attention to.
• E2.0 leads to a people-centric organization (Org. 2.0). The e2.0 manager should lead to the Org. 2.0.
• When we talk about people-centric, as HR, we mean the company maintains the talent pool so we achieve goals as a company. So, getting the best out of people. 
• Give people passion back, is that the core of e2.0? 
• For the jump from the Introduction to the more Professional set up (refer to Cordelia's slides) we need a longer-term vision (BASF). Which is the chart leading to Org. 2.0. Other change in corporate culture is addressed.

In sum: 

1. There clearly is a movement towards a new type of organization: people focus. Social tools are one of the things contributing to it.
2. These tools allow the company to become more collaborative, contribute more. This will become more primary. 
3. The e2.0 manager facilitates this movement. The more collaborative an organization is the less need there is for champions. In any case the role will be a more consulting than management or champion role.

Building a Company on Happiness

Zappos is a bit far away from a Dutchman. We don't have it here, yet. But of course you hear a lot about them. Zappos is praised for its culture, very engaged workforce, use of social media in business, great profit, etc.

Recently I wrote a post about 'Organizing on Passion'. Frederik Vieten, a student doing research at Océ, pointed me to Tony Hsieh's new book, Delivering Happiness. I hadn't heard of it yet, so that was a great pointer. I'm going to order and read it. But I also browsed the site and found a recent talk by Hsieh at Google.

Man, I watched it this talk this evening. And it's absolutely great. If you have an hour, just sit down, watch it and be inspired. What a great company and what a great leader Tony is. Here's the video:

I really liked the way the importance of company culture is stressed and how it can be crafted. I also love the way they select new employees based on questions linked to their core values. One of the most important Zappos values is 'be humble'. Wow! Tony says a company doesn't have to have the same values as Zappos, but if you have them it is key to really commit to them. To prove they are committed to their values they offer $2.000 to every new employee who wants to leave the company.

A neat thing is Zappos trains their employees to use Twitter (to express themselves, for customer contact, colleague connections, etc)

Another wow-moment was about their library. They have an open and free library for their employees and guest. Two key book in their to which Zappos relates deeply are: Jim Collins, Good to great and Dave Logan a.o., Tribal Leadership. Both books are great. And I've always wondered which high-level managers would take G2G and use it as a mirror for themselves as a leader and for the company. Hsieh is doing just that.

Thanks a lot Frederik for pointing to the book, that led to me finding this video!

Organizing on Passion

It's been a while ago since I read the great Shift Index 2009 report. I've been wanting to blog about it, but haven't had time yet. It's loaded with interesting insights. One big question I had is: This report is focused on the USA; how does this compare to Europe or Asia?

One thing from the report that stuck with me, was the importance of 'creative talent' and getting them to engage in 'creative problem solving, often by connecting with peers inside and outside the firm' (p. 11). On page 70 the report goes on to talk about 'worker passion'. The findings are pretty saddening. Lots of workers are not passionate about their work and self-employed workers are much more passionate than the firm-employed. The larger the size of the firm the less passionate workers get...

I went back to the Shift Index after reading a couple of things:

1. Steve Denning's post about the H in HR, which also points to the Shift Index and the importance of engaged workers delighting clients and stakeholders in self-organizing teams.
2. IBM's Capitalizing on Complexity study (to which ReadWriteWeb also recently referred) which stresses (cultivating) creativity is/will be key to thrive in a complex (business) world of the future.
3. Gartner's post about '10 Changes During the Next 10 Years'. Pointing to businesses working in work swarms. These are like teams, but have more emerging properties. They assemble and disassemble when needed. They are based on the spontaneity of workers

Maybe this is the difference millenials will make in the future, as prof. Andrew McAfee and Luis Suarez (a.o.) were debating.

All this got me thinking. As I commented on Denning's post: If this is so important, what would happen if we organized a company (even a large company!) on passion? Of course start-ups work in this way, if they're doing things well. So all workers could bail-out of their current projects, set up new ones, work on stuff (not) related to the company's mission statement, etc. What would happen? Would this work or will the un-interesting work (whatever that may be) be left undone? Or will this just lead to chaos?

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this topic! And I'd also be interested to hear of companies that are organized based on the passions of their employees.