There is no Enterprise
I have a confession.
I am starting to really hate the word “enterprise”.
The problem with the term enterprise is that it is an abstraction. An enterprise isn’t something you can see, touch, or work with directly. The adjectives that get applied to the word are themselves disconnected abstractions: an effective enterprise, a dysfunctional enterprise, an innovative enterprise. What do these things really mean? Aren’t they just wishy-washy arm-wavy generalizations?
Enterprises are everywhere, and yet, they are nowhere. When you talk to your bank teller, you are “interfacing with an enterprise”. But really, you’re talking to a person. You can’t hold the person responsible for the entire enterprise. (This fact has been wonderfully exploited by bureaucracy for decades now.)
Web 2.0 brought the individual into the world of the Internet. This revolution — like most others – was about bringing power to the people. Users add value to the web. Every URL is a latent community. Wikipedia, YouTube, and Flickr bring us content that we made for ourselves. Self-organizing groups. The freedom to share and discuss and annotate. This democratization changed the way people used the Internet and changed the way they interacted with each other. (props to Clay Shirky)
If we want to change the way people work, we have to give up on this notion of “the enterprise” as the thing that needs to change. We have to stop focusing on abstractions like Enterprise Content Management and Business Intelligence. We can’t claim to bring more “Collaboration“, more “Innovation” or more “Social” into the enterprise. These things are intangible, hard to see, hard to measure, and largely irrelevant to the problems at hand.
Trying to bring about change at the abstract level is impossible. What ends up being sold is a utopian ideal. No wonder most of these projects fail — they’re designed entirely in fairyland.
What we need to do is get back to reality. Let’s tell the architecture astronauts to come home.
Enterprises are made of people.
Related Posts
- An Enterprise 2.0 Definition
- Enterprise 2.0 Conference – Tuesday Morning
- Thoughts on the Viability of Enterprise 2.0 Webinar
- Enterprise 2.0 Checkpoint
- Defining Enterprise 2.0 : Emergence
OK, that sounds good, but… What then? You say: “If we want to change the way people work, we have to give up on this notion of “the enterprise” as the thing that needs to change.” — thereby implying that it’s the people that need to change. That’s an oversimplification, too, though.
People behave in groups differently — their behaviour in one group is different from their behaviour in another. They adapt to the group. This is as much a law of nature as what you’re suggesting above. Organisations *do* have a culture that exists outside of and is independent of the people who make it up — like classes and instantations of same. Changing that abstract culture is part of the game — if we ignore it, as you seem to be suggesting, we’ll fail just as surely. Won’t we?
Point well stated Gordon, especially the part where projects are “designed entirely in fairyland”. When we talk about ground up sponsorship and adoption, enterprise-level adoption is simply a byproduct. The focus should be on the individual, or small groups of individuals.
@Mark – I agree that culture is an emergent property
People certainly do behave differently in groups. But I think that the best way to bring about change is to work at the bottom of the org chart – not the top.
Perhaps, as @Jeremy said, we should focus more on those smaller groups of people. An overtly macro-level world view, which is the one that the C-level folk have, doesn’t help the problem. (Perhaps it’s a coincidence that the C-Level guys also seem to always hold the cheque-book… )
You can’t change the culture without winning people’s hearts and minds…
I was about to say something like “I totally agree…” when a question came to me.
It seems we both agree on the fact that considering enterprise only as an economic entity often makes us forget there are people behind. Let me also add that, thinking this way makes us consider enterprise as its own purpose despite it’s just a mean to organize people to fulfill a mission (which, at the start, is an individual or collective goal set by human beings !).
Finally what I found interesting is that you may be pointing at a cultural issue. Maybe I’m wrong but as long as I can remember, when I read or listen to english speaking people, the word “enterprise” has always been used to designate an economic or legal structure. A quick search in the “Robert & Collins” confirmed it.
In french the economic use of enterprise is a restriction of a more global concept which is more about “project”. The verb “entreprendre” was born in the 15th century and meant “take in your hand”. So in french “une entreprise” can be any project people may have, with or without organization, business. We can “entreprendre” a soccer game with friends, going shopping… Making a trip to discover a country can be an “entreprise”, painting your living room alone or wth friends can also be an “enterprise”. So it seems to me that, when we use “entreprise” outside of the business organization context you say project or undertakinfg. And when we say “entreprendre” you say “start upon” or begin.
Perhaps the only point is, while changing language, the word “enterprise” lost his original french meaning which was about “things people decide to do…whatever the purpose is”.
Hope this will help you to feel more comfortable with the “E” word.
[...] public confession last week stuck a chord with [...]
Enterprise has the same meaning in English too. I can’t say I’m unhappy about not having a copy of this “Robert and Collins” thing…
[...] in his groups and networks post. We’ve weighed in on the topic, too. Gordon wrote that there is no enterprise — it’s made of [...]
Hi Gordon,
I too think it’s at the individual level, an implosion from the inside out. (kind of the difference between spirituality vs convincing people with religion).
There has to be a low barrier to entry and self interest for the employee, it has to make their day easy and more effective. In aggregate a culture develops naturally…they will start influencing each other.
The ROI has to be for the individual first, then hopefully these conditions spread….
http://libraryclips.blogsome.com/2008/08/29/roi-for-the-knowledge-worker-is-roi-for-all-and-how-km-took-an-ironic-approach/
[...] to finish off Gordon from Infovark has a gem on the individuals that make up the [...]
[...] of your organization’s knowledge and insight from the ground level. We think that enterprises are made of people, and genuinely useful enterprise software has to acknowledge that [...]
Common John, ROI — that’s so wrong-headed here : ) [challenging you with the GREATEST of respect]
ROI is a fundamentally different economic model…one that is a fallacy just as much as the enterprise is.
Let me explain…for most major companies budgeting is done on a project basis, aligned to department numbers (even ‘bogus’ ones — since the major ERP data models require them). As well, for many of such companies there are no ‘enterprise’ budgets. Who’s going to administer them?
I’ve found that most employees are oblivious to the reality of ‘no enterprise’. They’re perfectly willing to run around and blame a ‘they’. So I ask them…go find a ‘they’ to place blame on, find out what their perceived responsibilities are, see how much budget and authority they have. Company after company, I find checklists of things that are being done, only to find that the ‘reality’ of the resources assigned to said responsibility is a veiled set of machinations (ala. Oz the man behind the curtain).
Tell that to Captain Kirk. But, seriously, any concept you use to talk about large scale organizations is subject to the same criticism. Total BS IMHO, you could also say there is no organization, but that doesn’t change the fact that people attempt to organize their activities in systematic ways. Practices, not processes, have always been the lubricant of organizations. Enterprise 2.0 is an attempt to bring this insight into the everyday activities of people engaged in doing the work of large scale organizations. These things do not happen from the bottom up. Attempts to do it that way remain “experiments” “trial projects” whatever you choose to call it. Tactic without strategy is meaningless.
Oh, I agree that tactic without strategy is indeed meaningless. I’m not arguing that people should just do ‘whatever’. Direction and effective planning is just as vital to success as it ever was.
My point is that sometimes we seem so enamored with these abstractions, and are frequently operating at such a removed distance from the problems themselves, that we risk confusing them for tangible things.
The reality of the enterprise is that it’s nothing more than an emergent system that resides entirely in the minds of it’s employees. Change management isn’t just another problem – it’s the only problem.
Social scientists, including organizational analysis folks, have been debating the action/structure dichotomy for almost 30 years. Just substitute the word emergence for action and you get the exact same argument.