Real Enterprise 2.0

I have been soundly disappointed in the Enterprise 2.0 movement.  It's unrelenting focus on a few mundane tools - rather than actual management applications - has been uninspiring.

Social Media in the workplace should not be "Wikis are good" or "We need a Sharepoint site."  The tools are immaterial.

Social Media's power is not in the tools, but in the actions enabled by the tools.  People don't need a wiki, they need what a wiki can do.  And, unfortunately, most wiki are horrible for what businesses actually need.

At Modus Cooperandi, we like to remind people that Knowledge Work is Perishable.  If you don't use it, you lose it.  You can lose it by neglect.  You can lose it by forgetfulness.  You can lose it because it's relevance expires.

But knowledge work can be properly stored.  This is the role of social media in the workplace - in the corporation.

Social Media isn't Facebook.  It isn't Twitter.  It isn't MySpace.  It isn't Digg.

Social Media are the objects that people imbue with meaning.  Social Media applications can store and share these objects, make them findable and give them permanence.  This increases the shelf life of social media.

Objects that companies create as a matter of course (reports, photographs, decisions, meeting minutes, etc.) are often lost or placed in containers with highly limited searchability - like notebooks or filing cabinets.

When this happens, knowledge work quickly becomes stagnant and dies.  Social media applications provide companies the infrastructure to develop processes which allow for things like:

• rapid ad hoc team creation
• distributed information sharing
• findable corporate knowledge (what knowledge management seeks to do)
• rapid and effective internal crowdsourcing
• better use of HR
• better use of company facilities, assets and amenities
• streamlined workflow
• better understanding of value between parts of the organization
• better recognition of value streams
• formal and informal communication
• highlighting of conflicting value streams or purposes
• detailed paper / audit trails
• low-impact / automated status reporting
• etc.

Enterprise 2.0, as I've seen it, has had some blind spots.  It does not take into account what people actually do at work or what processes in place.  Dion Hinchliffe quoted someone at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston this year as saying, "Change Management is the enemy of Enterprise 2.0."

What a scary thought.  To me, Change Management is the very rationale for Enterprise 2.0.

Technorati Tags: enterprise 2.0,dion hinchcliffe,web 2.0,web 2,enterprise 2,wiki,social media

Comments

[Dion Hinchcliffe]

Hi Jim,

Great post and I could not agree more other than I would observe that the "mundane tools" are not very mundane when they actually get engagement. Then they are quite exciting and can lead to the preservation of much of the perishable knowledge presently being lost in organizations today.

Also, I'd observe that one person's change management is another person's traditional, top-down, heavyweight process that forces everything into a square peg. That being said, I'm all for change management from the bottom up. :-)

Best,

Dion Hinchcliffe

[Stephan Dohrn]

Great post, Jim.

I have also found that people often focus on the tool instead of the problem it solves or the need it fills. Sometimes I get the impression that the tools are used to avoid change: "see, my (old) way works better!"

[Chris Brogan...]

Beautiful post. I love the thoughts about storing artifacts and what that looks like. I've bookmarked this for more consideration. Thanks.

[Pat Kitano]

Most technology strategists still don't recognize the social media as a living database because their tools driven mindset believe in forcing solutions across knowledge bases. It's pretty obvious from Enterprise 1.0 that one size doesn't fit all, and that is why the social media in all its flavors is a good platform for Enterprise 2.0 knowledge capture... but I agree, the enterprise knowledge architects don't see this...

[nick]

Hi Jim
A thought provoking post and comments. It is not the tools that are going to change how the Enterprise manages data but recognition by the Enterprise that change is an immediate necessity.

Bringing Enterprise 2.0 tools/processes and Management 2.0 onto the corporate agenda is helping to focus the need for Enterprise change.

Nick Barker (E20portal.com)

[Sacha Helfenstein]

Your posting clearly reminded me of some of me own writings on the subject.

At times where technology development outpaces, appears detached, or even jeopardizes our comprehension of their applicative value, critical reviews are a core means to make sense of the emerging IT-opportunities and facilitate apt technology deployment.

Hereto we have tried to reveal impending dissonances between the nominal industrial utility of Web 2.0-tools and their human use-related promises, ordering them into four conflict-categories: Utility, Design and Innovation, Deployment and Control, and Outcome Expectation.
We have also proposed a set of managerial stances suitable to address the issues raised.

E.g., our paper published at EISWT-08:
https://www.jyu.fi/erillis/agoracenter/tutkimus/sotech/publications/eiswt_managediss

[Olaf Gradin]

Ugh! I've been force-feeding the idea of a Social Enterprise to my organization for years now. Of course, you're right about the tools bit. A meeting with a colleague reminded me today that it's everything to do with the culture. People have to embrace the idea of a Social Enterprise. The concept hasn't translated into organizations like it did on the Internet, and I don't get that. I take from your piece here that we need to take a step back and begin the conversation again. Ditch the semantics and just talk collaboration needs of a community.

[Jim Benson]

Excellent comment.

Did you check out our 10 Principles of Social Media for Business?

http://ourfounder.typepad.com/leblog/2008/12/modus-cooperandis-10-principles-of-social-media.html

The problem with the "Social Enterprise" is it includes two very bad word "Social" and "Enterprise". Right out of the gate you are given two traditionally diametrically opposed terms. We expect people to "get it?"

So, yes, the big issue is culture. And at the heart of that is "Do we really understand what we do?" Who does what? What information do they need? When do handoffs occur? What reporting requirements are there? Etc.

The flow of work is what drives your culture. Are people excited to do their work? Do they feel that their job is their task or their part of the goals of the organization?

The collaboration needs of the community come from these questions.