Two Strategic Visions for Enterprise 2.0
Enterprise 2.0 advocates seem to be splitting into two camps. Their goal is the same: finding ways to apply collaborative tools to improve the way businesses operate. But they differ on what strategy to use. Dennis Howlett cautions Enterprise 2.0 advocates to tread carefully.
The root of the debate is whether you feel it’s better to focus on organizational effectiveness or individual productivity. Oscar Berg highlights some influential articles from both sides and notes that there seems to be a bias toward personal efficiency in most of the arguments made to support Enterprise 2.0
I think he is right that there is a bias for personal efficiency. I think it’s a healthy one, though others disagree.
The two strategies
Every organization is composed of multiple functions. These are normally grouped into logical departments such as accounting, marketing, product development, and so forth. The proponents of organizational effectiveness ask the question, is there a better way to arrange these parts? Can we reduce the friction between these components?
Now, let's see... should marketing report to sales or...?
If you fall in this camp, you want to do things like improve interdepartmental communications, establish clear lines of authority and areas of responsibility, break apart organizational silos, ensure smooth hand-offs, and improve business processes.
Those that focus on knowledge worker productivity, on the other hand, focus on whether the parts themselves can be improved.
Adopting bright ideas to save time and effort.
If you fall in this camp, you’re concerned about knowledge sharing, expertise location, cultivating talent and skills, and making sure that individuals have the right information for making decisions and the right tools to take action.
Power to the people
Both approaches are valuable and necessary. Which one you prefer has much to do with where you sit within the organization, as this article on productivity points out. But there are good reasons why we should favor the personal productivity over organization effectiveness.
- Web 2.0 technologies follow a user-centered approach. Applying Web 2.0 sensibility to organizational problems will require lots of customization and re-engineering. Applying those designs to knowledge workers is a much better fit.
- Many employees are already familiar with the conventions of these social tools. They use them at home. You lower training costs by following those models as closely as possible.
- User adoption has been a major stumbling block in most Enterprise 1.0 technology deployments. It makes sense to highlight the benefits to employees.
- While there have been at least two or three different waves of enterprise products targeted at organizational effectiveness (ERP, portals/KM, BPM, CRM, etc.) the suite of office tools used by knowledge workers have changed very little since the early 90s. There’s simply more opportunity for improvement there.
- Small changes applied across all knowledge workers can lead to dramatic gains. Just like in finance, productivity improvements yield compounding interest. If you can save a few extra minutes per day or per week, over time it can add up to something revolutionary.
For these reasons and others, I believe that companies pursuing Enterprise 2.0 should start — and think — small. What can we do to simplify, streamline or eliminate the tasks that prevent our knowledge workers from producing their best work? How can we provide support to small, agile, ad-hoc teams?
For me, the defining characteristic of Enterprise 2.0 is that it is about the individual, not the organization. There would be no need for an Enterprise 2.0 approach if Enterprise 1.0 approaches had worked.
Instead of Enterprise 2.0, perhaps it should be Employee 2.0?
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Employee 2.0 is a good perspective…great post!
This reminds me of PKM in comparison to KM.
My notion is to make my everyday job easier, and I will do that using whatever I can find…even if that means being an IT rogue. Heck, we use email and attachments as a work around for context specific processes…it’s our survival tool.
Steve Barth has the low down on PKM
http://reflexions.typepad.com/reflexions/power1.html
http://reflexions.typepad.com/reflexions/resources-in-personal-km.html
So in this respect PKM, and employee 2.0 are related to sense-making…how can I make sense of my issue using workplace resources and people and act upon it.
It’s no good aggregating a pile of personally productive people, we need to connect these nodes, as the networks are the edge to adaptation and agility.
From this inside-out approach hopefully indirectly we are building bridges to silos (not smashing them, as silos are natural), and increasing organisational effectiveness and performance.
Here’s my post
http://libraryclips.blogsome.com/2009/05/18/sensemaking-pkm-and-networks/
Plus this whole concept of knowledge sharing or openness is about engagement…people need intrinsic motivation.
http://libraryclips.blogsome.com/2010/01/28/its-not-about-knowledge-sharing-its-about-engagement-and-context/
John hits it well: “It’s no good aggregating a pile of personally productive people.”
While there may be camps, we can’t let them be distinct camps. I agree that starting with activities that provide individuals with the right information and resources to act at the right time has a number of benefits, all increasing efficiency and promoting adoption. However, we can’t abandon pursuit of the organization leverage that comes from interconnectedness.
Early wins are key, and the individual effectiveness arguments hold sway, but the long term motivation behind it should remain the creation and promotion of the collaborative culture. “Building bridges to silos” to quote John’s comment again.
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If John is right that “it’s no good aggregating a pile of personally productive people” then it makes even less sense to aggregate a pile of unproductive folks.
I’m not arguing that we should ignore teamwork and collaboration. But we need to train and equip members of the team.
I’d rather teach star athletes the importance of coordination and collaboration than lead a synchronized team of couch potatoes.
I’ve never been a believer that the popular “emergent” usage patterns governing E2.0 strategy will work in the long run; indeed, those that do, might simply be culturally different outliers rather than proving any such rule.
Technology tools of any kind need to be about problem solving and that’s always going to be on terms users (not organizations) understand best. Solve problems for users without extra drag and adoption won’t be a problem – users will fall over each other to get access to the tools.
That’s what behind the “consumerization of IT” trend in the beginning of E2.0 coming out of Web 2.0 – simply imposing software on an unsuspecting organization is Enterprise 1.0 all over again. Users will inevitably cobble their own point solutions to persistent problems if all they have are abstract tools to work with.
Hey guys, Boyd’s law is a pithy explanation for what I mean:
http://johntropea.tumblr.com/post/41954985/connected-people-will-naturally-gravitate-toward
“Connected people will naturally gravitate toward an ethic where they will trade personal productivity for connectedness: they will interrupt their own work to help a contact make progress. Ultimately, in a bottom-up fashion, this leads to the network as a whole making more progress than if each individual tries to optimize personal productivity…
Perhaps more importantly, the willingness to assist others leads to closer social connections, and increases the likelihood of reciprocal behavior, where an obsession with personal productivity does not.
On a work basis, businesses today want it (or think they want it) both ways. They want their employees to be personally productive, making the classic logical error that if everyone is highly productive personally then the company will be. Nope.”
Hey John,
That’s a great quote from Stowe Boyd, and quite correct. Forgive me for being flippant earlier. I couldn’t resist.
My point was that I think we have the ability to make some game-changing improvements in personal productivity by working smarter and using better tools. Done right, that means less time taken up doing busywork and more time spent on creative endeavors and in collaboration with peers.
…And I can’t believe that Stowe bothered writing a law that was longer than 140 charaters