21st Century Organization

Enterprise 2.0: A solution in search of a problem

2009-07-09T10:57:36-04:00

A CEO’s first question, after the decision to launch a new product or expand to a new market in a different geography, is WHO will lead this endeavor? states the EVP of HR of a global media giant. Notice the CEO did not ask what technology will we use to support.

Talent at the end of the day is what makes or breaks a business. Technology enables individual and group performance which translates to organizational results. No doubt in some cases poor technology actually hobbles organizational performance.

I’m a technology advocate, but I think the emphasis needs to be on the who, not the how which is where E2.0 has focused despite protestations of its proponents. Reading some of the recent manifestos Andrew McAfee’s How Beautiful it is, how easily it can be broken or Michael Kreigsman’s mash up of Gary Hamel and McAfee, Enterprise 2.0, the Kumbaya irony one still gets the sense that technology is the “white knight” if we can only get the people to collaborate.

Technology generally has developed along the lines of someone seeking a better means (automation) to an end – an extension of what we have, tractor replacing a horse. Sometimes technology is applied to satisfy a desire to have more knowledge (fmri to map the brain territory in operation when we think of an object or concept - now a reality) and lastly, technology is a happy accident – a tool for one purpose turns out to have business benefits - Facebook like social networks, blogs wikis, and RSS – repurposed consumer tools for business. Historically, happy accidents abound. 3M’s semi-sticky glue meets scrap paper bookmarks equals Post-it Notes (now digital). Social media feels like Post-its.

Jenny Ambrozek and I

have written before on technology/tool transience in our Facebook Groups for Business investigation. Five years ago only a small group used FB, two years ago what was Twitter? A year from now who knows what tool we will have. I’ll go so far as to say these technologies are only artifacts in our search to keep making our work and life more efficient, effective and meaningful.

Which gets back to the CEO’s question WHO will lead the business endeavor?

Once we start talking about WHO we are back to the beginning again. People, their skills, abilities, competencies, relationships and networks. Yes, social networks the backbone of getting work done or not. Not all folks play well with others. We are inherently social, but with social comes both competitive as well as collaborative behavior. Human behavior is a well studied field, but some how not known to many technologists.

Why businesses don’t collaborate- Meeting management, group input and wiki use is a nice survey conducted by Stuart Mader and Scott Abel. There really are no surprises in the report. All the usual suspects are accounted for – resistance to change, too many tools, and not enough time.

Organizational – people basics are what matter. Rob Cross, interviewed for the Financial Times comments, You can kit everybody out with Google’s new Wave system, which combines all the latest communication and social networking features, but if the right people are prevented by bad gatekeepers or energy-sapping bosses from working together, nothing will come of it.

Technologists keep tripping over the same human system in the middle of the floor.

At the 2009 Miami FOWA conference I caught up with Mark Masterson about my observations on human systems which he captured in his blog post on the event…

At dinner Monday night, Victoria and I had been kvetching over the problem that too many wheels get reinvented in the IT industry. People never seem to know what other people have already done, and assume they've had some profound insight when, in fact, they've just gone down a path well worn by any number of other people. In particular, people don't read enough. We're all in such a hurry -- there never seems to be enough time to just sit down and learn. So Victoria's gripe was that there was lots of research, both existing and ongoing, on things like organisational models, webs of trust, and so on, all of which contained significant information of value for IT practitioners working on software to enable things like social networking and collaboration. Yet, she said, it was a rare developer or designer that she'd meet who had the slightest idea of the existence of such research.

Leap frogging our selves into the future

The good news is each wave of technology actually does leap frog us over our own human limitations. Although the business of leaping can be pretty messy; just like the game, most of us have good intentions of moving forward, but we succumb to change fatigue. Efficacy has us opt for the equilibrium of status quo (which I prefer over resistance, having a pejorative slant) just to survive in our fast paced work environments.

A few folks stand out in the next leap forward Sandy Pentland, MIT – "sociometers" Honest Signals, Tim Berners Lee, Harvard – Linked Data , Fred Wilson, tech venture capital – Union Square Ventures, neuroscientists Marcel Just, Carnegie Mellon University – “thought identification” and Gemma Colvert, Neurosense – neuromarketing.

What connects these wizards is sensing (as in detection) and semantic (as in smart web). Between sensors, semantics and science our connectedness will become transparent. What they are achieving will more nearly marry our brain patterns to our social behavior with a web presence.

We are moving to linked data in a profound way – stuff talks to stuff and has been for the past few years. RFID chips track goods in the supply chain and your car trouble is diagnosed remotely. With Tim Berners-Lee’s Linked Data we will begin to not only structure how we tag information but be able to see the relationship of data sets as in network maps. My wiki may hold information which is unique or 95% redundant to another. The benefits become obvious.

Pentland’s “sociometers” are now gathering early data on the dominance of our nonlinguistic communications and their importance in increasing our 'network intelligence, comments Bob Metcalf. Looking much like a cell phone, the sociometer provides real time social network relationships.

These technologies are not science fiction. They are works in progress being used by top brand companies. Unilever, Intel, P&G, McDonald’s, and MTV-Viacom are all exploring neuromarketing.

Today’s web 2.0 and E2.0 are still rather clunky requiring endless conscious clicks between oceans of information accompanied by huge amounts of human energy to get people to become “users”. Ideally, we are “prosumers” with the above technologies, simultaneously generating and consuming.

Predictive power

What makes these technologies a leap ahead of web 2.0/E2.0 is their predictive power and embedded science of behavior.

Hopefully, when the CEO asks “who” will lead, science based technologies will enable an informed answer. The technology solution is then to serve the ever present problem – how to enable us to be more effective and efficient at what we want to do.

~Victoria G. Axelrod

Code Green: Earth is Hiring

2009-07-08T23:06:04-04:00

Great find for "green career" transitioners in June Outside Magazine's Code Green.

Not all jobs in the "green economy" will require new technical expertise. Not surprising many of the administrative positions will require classic skills in finance, marketing, sales, HR and IT. You may be in a renewable energy company, but your work may not look much different from the consumer goods company you just left.

... Kevin Doyle, founder of the Boston-based consulting firm Green Economy. "How did green jobs come to mean renewable-energy jobs?" he asked. What about conservation biologists? Park rangers?

"Once you stop defining your green opportunities around six or seven job titles in clean energy, then you're back where you were and, frankly, where you always are, which is: Who are you? What do you want to do?"

Green Career Central has more of Doyle's insights including excerpts from his book The ECO Guide to Careers That Make a Difference: Environmental Work for a Sustainable World. There are also some good federal government links at the end of the Code Green article to help steer you in the right direction.

My advice - every new field will claim to have career experts, so use common sense and vet your sources as you would in a more traditional field. Caveat emptor.

~Victoria G. Axelrod

Originally posted to the Sustainable Enterprise Network.

Social Media: The Five-Year Forecast

2009-04-29T15:38:33-04:00

Operating on the assumption that consumer behavior is driving corporate innovation, transformation and design faster than any internal strategies it appears past time to wake-up and pay attention to the impact of social media.

"The Future of the Social Web," by Jeremiah Owyang, a Forrester senior analyst, examines the monumental changes that have shaped -- and will continue to impact -- how consumers engage with each other. While you read these excerpts think of the impacts to your business, not just marketing but your value proposition, how you operate and the talent you employ.

1. The era of social relationships: Beginning in the mid-1990s, people signed up for online profiles and connected with their friends to share information.

2. The era of social functionality: As it exists today, social networking is more than just a platform for "friending," but one that can support a broader array of what Owyang calls "social interactive applications." However, identities are essentially disconnected silos within individual sites.

3. The era of social colonization: By late 2009, technologies such as OpenID and Facebook Connect will begin to break down the barriers of social networks and allow individuals to integrate their social connections as part of their online experience, blurring the lines between networks and traditional sites.

4. The era of social context: In 2010, sites will begin to recognize personal identities and social relationships to deliver customized online experiences. Social networks will become the "base of operation for everyone's online experiences."

5. The era of social commerce: In approximately two years, social networks will be more powerful than corporate Web sites and CRM systems, as individual identities and relationships are built on this platform. Brands will serve community interests and grow based on community advocacy as users continue to drive innovation in this direction.

Although I have come to realize the business world still organizes around very tight bubbles of self-interest (echo chambers) the folks who grab the link potential of networks will be the game changers. Their future will look like the future outlined above.

~Victoria G. Axelrod

21st Century Organizations @ Business of Community Networking: IBM, Avon, CondoDomain, AMA Boston & the National Collegiate Scouting Association

2009-04-01T08:39:50-04:00

When Victoria Axelrod and I started writing about 21st Century Organizations here 3 years ago examples of enterprises not leveraging their people networks for success abounded but good models were less obvious. The joy of the Business of Community Networking conference, in which we just participated, was access to terrific case examples. Here are some enterprises to watch:

IBM-Given the many times we've written about IBM's capacity to leverage knowledge deep within the organization (through JAMS) and from outside to inform their strategy (for example to rethink patent management p95 ), it was no surprize hearing Mark Bonchek, Chief Strategist Soundbridge, describing his company's work creating and supporting IBM's CIO Executive Advisory Council. From the disciplined approach to engaging external stakeholders as advisors to the metrics being tracked and stories of customers becoming brand advocates, IBM understands creating value through people interacting.

AVON- Kristen Mitchell, Marketing Manager, AVON Online, provided inspiration and practical ideas from her use of social networking platforms to empower Avon representatives, extend their businesses and grow sales on and offline. Clearly Avon is prepared to experiment and evolve to operate in today's connected world.

Condo Domain- Hearing Erica Farthing, Director of Social Media describe using blogs, video, Twitter, to extend this startup's brand and engage customers reminded me of Stowe Boyd's 2006 meme: "the individual is the new group". Erica does not hesitate to use her individual enthusiasm for her company and work to help build the business. Nor it appears do happy customers who appear in video interviews. The subsequent discussion raised the management issues around having employee identities so visible but clearly CondoDomain benefits from Erica's social media outreach. Read CondoDomain's story through their press coverage.

American Marketing Association, Boston- President Myles Bristowe captured attention describing his organization's evolved use of a Ning Network to grow membership and serve members. AMA Boston's disciplined networking, including defined roles and responsibilities in the social network built on research into the "economics of contribution", is inspirational.

National Collegiate Scouting Association- Brian Davidson, Director of Social Media, opened eyes and possibilities describing use of an array of public social netorking platforms to promote NCSA. Hearing about sales happening as a result of outreach and respectful conversations in Twitter leaves no doubt about it's growing importance and potential for doing business and serving customers directly.

Clearly the "Business of Community Networking" is evolving but success from the array of initiatives presented points to the importance of not dallying in experimenting with the new ways to connect with customers and members the latest generation of social networking tools provide.

For more BOCN nuggets read the Twitter stream from #bocn and @just_kate's excellent summary blog post here. And if you represented a model 21st Century Organization at #BOCN, putting people networks to work to grow your business, and I've overlooked you, please alert me.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

Business Community Leaders: Francois Gossieaux Needs You

2009-03-19T09:01:48-04:00

Francois Gossieaux is a valued colleague, especially as he had the courage to contribute his Marketing 2.0 Facebook Group to our 2007 Facebook Groups in Business Investigation (FGIBI).

In a conversation yesterday--preparing to share our FGIBI learning at the Business of Community Networking Conference* in Boston next week-- Francois provided an update on his Tribalization of Business Study, a research program started last year.

The 2009 study is now underway with an excellent response so far, but Francois wants to spread the widest possible net to gather insights from those responsible for business community leadership about social media use. If you wear this hat please take the 20 minutes necessary to participate. Provide your contact information and you will be rewarded with an early copy of the survey findings. Francois will also be conducting audio interviews with selected survey respondents including some live so watch the study site for the schedule.

It is 5 years since Joe Cothrel and I convened the Online Communities in Business Study 2004. If you were a respondent to our study, and still in the business, you are especially encouraged to participate to share your deep industry experience. I will support any research effort that might help shed more light on our key 2004 findings that:

Most organizations can’t measure return on investment (72%)
Many people still don’t understand what online community is (72%)
The discipline of creating and managing communities is poorly defined (59%)

~ Jenny Ambrozek

* If you are in Boston next Wednesday March 25 our Facebook Group Investigation discussion, including Francois Gossieaux, fellow blogger Victoria Axelrod and Patti Anklam (who conducted our network analysis) takes place at 10.15am. The day opens with a keynote from Clara Shih, SalesForce, who developed their Faceforce application. Clara's book "The Facebook Era" publishes next week.

Use code MDR573 for a signficant registration discount. We look forward to your joining the discussion.

Complexity and Cockroaches: How markets tumble

2009-03-06T08:33:27-05:00

Recently, we had a house guest who has raised substantial funds for significant institutions. He is both very conservative and clear headed about our economic condition. Not a pessimist, more a modeler of facts the way a physicist, which he was, might describe our financial crisis. As he said to me “It is a big non-linear system that has collapsed and will not come back as we know it.”

When might we re-coup I asked? “Well it took from 1928 until 1958 to get back to the same financial level.” Ouch! He is a big believer in Jay Forrester, The Prophet of Unintended Consequences and father of systems dynamics who pretty much echoed my guests words.

Those of us who work in organizations have all seen the unintended consequences of an initiative that had “so much promise” create utter turmoil. Forrester describes these manifestations as compensating feedback. Organizations often establish policies or may even have simple operating rules which create unintended havoc.

Vanessa Drucker, a financial writer friend was interviewed on the Kudlow Report, February 19th about Edge of Reason a piece she wrote for Fund Strategy Magazine. Her point made clear in print and interview is a seemingly simple decision by the SEC regarding leverage that may have been the simple rule which enabled massive unintended consequences to global financial ruin.

We have written about the dynamics of complex, self-organizing systems here before and hope that more organizations explore the simple rules in their organizations before they too suffer unintended consequences. What about the cockroaches? You'll have to watch the Kudlow Report to find out, but without being a spoiler, they're very good at adaptation.

~ Victoria G. Axelrod

Heads up Pepsi – Make Everyone a Winner!

2009-03-05T17:04:09-05:00

Sustainability is a serious and systemic issue with our Great Recession testing its progress everyday as evidenced by a recent NY Times headline New York Vulnerable to Poaching in Recession.

With a quick read, the article appeared to describe, a short term response by Pepsi Bottling Group (PBG) of NY to scoot out from pressures to contribute container deposit revenues to NY State. PBG's pulling up roots and moving to NJ is sweetened by $34mm in tax incentives. Moving an operation under any circumstances is consequential, but in the current economic environment it is a triple threat; more loss than gain for employees, corporate profits and productivity.

Digging further into the issue of bottle return protocols, laws and the underlying intent – to keep our countryside free of litter a.k.a. environmental pollutants and drive recycling behaviors revealed a complex web of players, goals and lack of collaboration.

We all too often address symptoms – massive bottle/can build-up or case in point PBG fleeing to NJ to avoid paying NY bottle return revenue. And fail to recognize the primary issue or essence, which is in this case beverage packaging. Robert Fritz depicted oscillating behaviors (addressing symptoms only) as a car on a rocking chair – the folks in the car think they are making progress, but in reality they are going nowhere. Is there an alternative container that is not only more sustainable, but “regenerative” as Carol Sanford called it at an MIT Sustainability Lab?

Pepsi tries to demonstrate their commitment to sustainability, but it falls short of their supply chain delivery of product to the end consumer. Containers are part of the Pepsi product not just the beverage inside. Let’s stop the cycle of shifting the symptoms around. Pepsi, take a systemic stakeholder view, convene the network of players and be an industry role model for redesigning beverage delivery, packaging and recycling. We have mapped some of the stakeholder network to give you a head start. In the short and long term everyone’s a winner using this model.

~ Victoria G. Axelrod

FOWA Miami: Where are the Women Application Developers?

2009-03-02T13:43:25-05:00

At TheAppGap I've blogged about the FOWA Miami technical highlights and speakers sending buzz through the auditorium. This post shares the unexpected conference moment that focused attention on the cultural issues around technology development and adoption.

Speaker Kristina Halvorson abbreviated her presentation about the importance of content in application development to bring conference head, Ryan Carson and Chris Messina to the stage for a discussion about the under representation of women at FOWA (within both the audience and as speakers.)

FOWA attendee Obie Fernandez’s conference write up reports "11 women out of 800 people registered" and these discussion highlights:

"Challenges for organizers
· Fewer women applicants
· Fewer women on circuit
· Fewer "high-profile" women speakers

                                             Photo Courtesy Alex Designs

The potential speaker's challenge:
· Lack of role models
· Lack of support and resources
· The girl/boy thing. In classrooms, a boy will raise his hand whether or not he knows the answer.

Girl will only raise hand if she knows the answer. (Basically it takes hubris to be a presenter.)
· Perceived "white boys" club."

A limited presence by women at FOWA is not new. Chris Messina first raised the issue in a 2006 blog post. And interestingly, as blogger Agorum reports:

"The main reason I want to mention that speech is the huge amount of criticism I've heard about it, which is something that I unfortunately expected and proves the point of the male-centric attitude that still exists in tech."

More power to Ryan Carson for allowing a center stage discussion about the lack of women at FOWA. Subsequently I’ve heard from colleagues that such lack of diversity impacts other technology focused conferences too, especially SXSW.

Bottom line: the search is on for leading women Web application developers to speak at FOWA. Send Twitters to @ryancarson tagged #tweetspeak.

Clara Shih, Faceforce developer whose “Facebook Era” book publishes in March comes to my mind as a potential FOWA presenter, as does Kaliya Young Hamlin, who nudges the evolution of Open Identity. Given Kaliya’s focus on promoting openness she has already shared her lessons about being a speaker so others can learn from them here.

Please take a moment to share your observations about women in technology, impact on organizations, and women developers' lack of presence at conferences. What are the implications and your suggestions for addressing?

~ Jenny Ambrozek

Change = PARTICIPATION

2009-02-27T18:03:24-05:00

What do Tropicana and Facebook have in common? One product is physical and has been around for 60+ years. The other is digital and 5 years old. Both tried changes – brand image and privacy policy without involving customers in the decision making process. Have we forgotten New Coke’s experience already?

Here is a heads up. If it involves me, I need to be part of the decision. A simple principle of human behavior. The principle is procedural and distributive justice.

Research in legal decisions and with sales force members and marketing indicates that even if the outcome is in my favor, if I have had little or no inclusion in the process I am still discontented. Check out research by Thomas Brashear, professor of marketing at U Mass. Similar data indicates massive failure of most organizational change processes due do lack of inclusion of the affected parties.

In case it slipped by your radar, PARTICIPATION is what drives the connected world.

Technology has given voice to procedural and distributed justice. Call them what you will, social media, web 2.0, or enterprise 2.0, ignore participation at your peril.

This is why colleague Jenny Ambrozek calls her self a "participation architect" and why we created:

"Open^∞netWORKing"

to help organizations implement the shift.

~ Victoria G. Axelrod

Why this Season of Web 2.0 Discontent?

2009-02-20T15:02:00-05:00

Has Web 2.0 lost it's sparkle? Finding multiple posts suggest an intriguing trend.

At Techcrunch, Robin Wauter uses a barometer of declining number of startups contacting his company and including the term Web 2.0 in the subject line or message as an indicator suggesting the "Death of Web 2.0".

Beyond this Wauters looks to Google trends for insight into Web 2.0 interest:

".. the term started being used at the end of 2004 when Tim O’Reilly organized the first edition of the Web 2.0 Conference. Search queries for the term started picking up in the middle of 2005, when TechCrunch was started - with the tagline “Tracking Web 2.0″ by the way - and the number kept increasing until the end of 2007. After that, the trend is clearly downwards, falling back to the level it reached in early 2006 today. If the trend continues, there should only be a handful of people left who scour search engines for 'Web 2.0' by 2011."

I've added a note to my 2011 calendar to test that prediction. Meantime, seriously, where does Web 2.0 stand? Where do we look for clues to declining Google search interest in Web 2.0? And what new is capturing attention?

A February 2009 McKinsey Quarterly article "Six ways to make Web 2.0 work" provides helpful insights? It reports McKinsey's study of 50 Web 2.0 early adopters over the past two years and finds:

"Our work suggests the challenges that lie ahead. To date, as many survey respondents are dissatisfied with their use of Web 2.0 technologies as satisfied."

The article goes on to describe the impediments dissenters cite:

"..organizational structure, the inability of managers to understand the new levers of change, and a lack of understanding about how value is created using Web 2.0 tools. We have found that, unless a number of success factors are present, Web 2.0 efforts often fail to launch or to reach expected heights of usage. Executives who are suspicious or uncomfortable with perceived changes or risks often call off these efforts. Others fail because managers simply don’t know how to encourage the type of participation that will produce meaningful results."

The rest of the article is recommended reading especially as it reiterates the case that Victoria Axelrod and I will be making Monday to our FOWA workshop participants. Successful technology development and adoption demand both focus on engaging stakeholders in the business improvement to be gained and a deep understanding of the human networks on whose success they depend.

~ Jenny Ambrozek