It’s both a social and economic discussion, that is very close to more concrete things we experience everyday in the workspace.

Let’s be clear : nothing is free. There are things that people has not to pay for, and mistaking the two concepts may make us go astray to a large extent. When we don’t pay for a content we must keep in mind that advertisers pay for us. Let’s consider, for instance, something that is free at first sight : the content of a blog. The author pays the price : hosting, the time invested… But, most of times, he decides not to pass the costs along the readers. Fortunately, he has a job that makes him earn enough to live. No one pays his rents with the consideration shown by his audience or with an exchange of service.

Knowing that, if the actitivity of producing contents is different from the one that makes people earn for their living, it could be free, when they meet it’s impossible except if the content producer can live on nothing and than gentle organizations will provide him with a home, food, electricity,…without anything in return. Stop dreaming.

The same phenomenon happens in the workplace when things come to collaboration, participation, social networking.

Everyone has his job, for which he’s paid. Everything he does and produces is financed by the person who pays him (he’s paid on a “local” budget which someone is responsible for even if at the end it’s the company money). On a strictly accounting point of view (and don’t tell me it’s irrelevant, everyone who has to manage a budget knows what I’m talking about), breaking silos means making something that has been financed by one person should become freely accessible by the whole company. Even worse, freeform collaboration means that someone someone who is paid on a department or business unit’s budget should be asked to make something (either it lasts 1 min or 1 hour) that someone else will benefit from.

The problem is not a the employee’s level, at his level everything being transparent, but at the management’s level because it’s in charge of optimizing how budgets are used. Unlike tghe general public web, businesses don’t know how not to pass a local cost along to the the whole organization since everyone has to justify the way the allowed funds are used. In brief, businesses don’t understand free across its departments. Rather, their internal policies don’t make that possible.

Do solutions exist ? Knowing that, in the end, the company takes benefit from collaboration, beyond internal rivalry, maybe the equivalent of a “global licence” should be a good thing. As a matter of fact, money comes from a one and only pocket, the company’s, that would like collaboration to grow within its walls. But it should take away manager’s sense of responsibility and the cure may be worse than de disease. Or maybe the good old distribution key, revisited for the service industry, could work. Who knows.

NB : Goldratt tells us that “cost allocation kills productivity”. Here’s an example that makes businesses continuously reivent the weel.

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At each step of your project, you have to wonder if you have the answer to some key questions. If you don’t, slow down and take the time to find it instead of insisting in a direction that may be wrong.

If we assume that a project is made of 3 phases, exploration (when you try to understand a new phenomenon,), pilot (when you validate what you thought you have understood) and industrialization (when you scale things up to make them company-wide), here a 10 questions you must be able to answer to.

There is not always an only right answer. But an answer is needed. When the choice is between “yes” or “not” I let you guess what is right one and what the other means…

1°) At the end of the exploration phase

What are the tools I’m planning to use do and don’t do ? More precisely, what are they designed for, and what aren’t they designed for.

Do I have any idea of how my project will change the way people work ? Can I visualize what the workplace will look like then ? And am I ready to assume.

Can I demonstrate the project’s impact on the value chain, on value creation, on people’s efficiency ? (At least theorically)

2°) While running pilots

Are the contents and information published and shared by “real” users or by people who have been assigned this task to make things look busy.

Have I formalized and shared the expected “outcomes” ? And checked they made sense in people’s day to day work ?

Am I sure that the purpose of people that play a part in the project (whether internal or external) is to deliver these outcomes or to make enough noise in the tool to deserve their pay ? Does the use of the tool have become the project’s goal to the detriment of operational objectives ?

Have I organized the way how the expected social interactions and what they’ll produce will be reused for business purpose (ex : how an idea will become a project, how people will be able to access and reuse their peer’s knowledge, how one will be able to mobilize people  found through these interactions…)

Did I thought about “social routine” with managers, and began its implementation ?

3°) In the industrialization phase

Do I have concrete indicators that measure social logic’s contribution to business (lenght of the innovation cycle, lenght of the sales cycle, turnover, number of best practices formalized, meetings avoided, ideas gathered, lenght of the decision making cycle, decrease of the time spent by managers to connect people together…)

Do I have examples of things that would not have happened without the project ? And what was their impact.

Of course this is not an exhaustive list but I’m sure that the inability to provide the answer to one of these questions (or provide the wrong one) may have painful consequences one day or the other while taking the time to think about it at the right moment would prevent from future disappointments.

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At first sight nothing changed. Cases start with a problem, explain what has been done and the results got. But it does not seem to work as well as before. The reason is quite simple : in the past cases were about softwares that treated and automated many tasks and helped to improve such or such thing. The only software was shown at the cause of how a given business went from a situation A to a situation B. It was credible and everyone believed it. Anyway, people believed all the more since everyone was implementing the the software, helped with the same consultants who where using the same methodologies, getting to the same implementations. Of course, one may object that from the case to the implementions there were lots of impressive gaps. That’s a fact : as every business is different from another, there are human, managerial, organizational and cultural factors that are neutral. But the nature of the projects made that people only need to have the proof that “the software could do it”, provided it came from a credible company.

Another factor had signifcant consequences. If all companies used to implement the same things, the same way, made the same choices, it was also because they were asked to be “comparable”. Investors knew that they could not compare apples with bananas so, even unconciously, they initiated a pressure that lead to the same choices and made companies adopt the same practices and technologies. Who would have risked to be pointed at because of nonconformist management, technology or organizational choices that would have made that their results and operations could not have been compared point by point with their competitors, using the same indicators in the same context.

Enterprise 2.0 cases differ for two reasons.

The first one is because enterprise 2.0 software do nothing by themselves, that everything relies on human and managerial variables…which were the “hidden variables” in the 2000’s cases. But, this moment, the soft was enough whereas everybody understands that today’s issues are elswhere. Very few companies wanted to explain how they dealt with political, cultural issues, with internal battles for power, how their HR tried something that could be seen as too disruptive to be publicized. More, let’s be honnest about it, even if they did it would not be of any use. Answers brought by a company A to these questions may be radicaly different from those who’ll fit a company B. An enterprise 2.0 case may ask questions, but everyone has to find his own answers. What leads us to the second point.

Let’s remember one of the key principles of enterprise social media. “Make businesses less similar”. So it’s logical not to find any standardized answer to the “how to succeed” question. It’s about understanding logics, to know what are the main issues but there is no way to find a ready to use recipe. If, on some projects, the profusion of technology could hide the lack of understanding or reflection, what is sure is, in enterprise 2.0 projects,  methodology must support common sense and can’t substitute for it.

But there’s a good news : many people used to criticize ERP projects for not creating any competitive advantage. It’s logical since all business had to be comparable, adopt the same recipes, so they were all moving on parallel lines without any chance to make any difference. Ultimately, what was gained in productivity benefited to customers through competition on prices but in no way to businesses. Here, it’s the contrary since the benefits broughts through software depends on factors that are unique to each company. Knowledge, culture, human capital, innovation potential…that’s what distinguish two companies even if they look similar. That leads to think that a successful implementation of social software will be much more differenciating than any other IT projects. But are they still IT projects ?

Enterprise 2.à cases tell us “it’s possible…others did it !”. We’ll have to content ourselves with that. If some are waiting to find the case that will perfectly match their own business…same culture, past, market… they may wait a long time.

adoption, étude de cas, culture, Entreprise 2.0, implémentation, social-media, social-software

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Who would accept to make everything he writes on his word processor public ? No one. In the other hand, starting a work on one’s own and invite people to collaborate as and when needed because some help is needed, because it’s better to ask a specialist to write a specific part, because proof-reading is needed or because the manager needs to know how things are going on without getting a daily report makes a lot of sense. One starts on his own and widens the scope of the human, social and knowledge capital that is used he can’t do more, when he realizes he won’t be able to deliver on time or when he faces his limits. I think that enterprise 2.0 has a lot to learn from that, most of all on the adoption side. What drives collaboration is “me, the goals I’m assigned, my tasks, my issued”, and if we want to bring people to the logic that will make them help their colleagues, they first need to understand how this logic will serve them. Then for the same reasons they bring themselves to “invite” people on their Google Docs, they’ll initiate the famous conversations that are so important in the 2.0 culture.

That’s the evidence that, for 99% workers, things are not social by nature but by need. Everything starts with a (personal) taks, with (personal) limits that are faced and with the need of making all these things “social” in order to get out of the situation. Such a logic can lead to a systematic sharing not because people want to share but because they realize they have to. Conversely, any systematic sharing that would not be the result of this reasonning would be against people’s nature and causes apprehension.

What conclusions can we draw ?

- in practical terms : if we want to “educate” workers,  we must start from their true personal situation, their day to day job, what they have to do, the processes and routine they follow and build the social logic around it. Believing that day to day work will adapt to social is a mistake. In the ongoing arbitration people carry out at work (do or don’t, what to prioritize) the social vs process battle will always be won by the process and the usual routine (what I even find reassuring in some ways). The only way not to set the one againts the other is to articulate, make them become complementary. A link that can be brought by the social routine.

- in technical terms (tools) : the chosen tool(s) must allow users to follow the above mentionned logic. To start from them to end by opening themselves to others. That will help them seeing sharing not as a constraint but as a solution. It implies that the tool must be seen as a personal business and productivity tool even by those who are impervious to the social approach, in order it will be used even by those who share few things, even nothing at all. This is the only way to make everybody put at least one finger in the system what will help leaders to drag the others along.

At this point the BPM discussion and the building of social logics and interactions around lowly ERPs and CRMs. If I can’t see a single tool managing both formal and non formal data, the time is near when businesses will  require that the shift from one to another can be done in one click, that the “social” could start mechanically, spontaneously (so both a human and software mechanism to implement) from the structured (and structuring) processes.

PS : obviously it’s less stylish, less “purist” than organizing social fireworks that would not leave any other alternative. Maybe it’s only an intermediate solution. But it relies on what currently exists and the deep nature of people as a lever rather than fighting it.

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One of the social CRM principles is to create attention, then relationship in order to “pull” the business. It’s not about jumping at the first comer and try to make him buy something but to make people come by themselves, in a trusted context, in order to build a relationship that goes far beyond the only fact of quickly reaching a sale transaction.

On the opposite side, the traditional marketing approach has one main goal : generate leads, that’s to say a list of qualified names ready to be wolfed down by a starving sales team.

Two cases to understand the difference.

1st case : imagine a store where the salesclerks are nice, give you all the information you ask for without trying to “flog” anything you don’t want to you. Imafine another store, where a vulture jumps at you at the moment you open the door and asks you to give your name, address, phone number, email address to bring you into the logic that will make you buy something, whether you need it or not.

2nd case. Imagine you are managing a company’s online presence (large business, no good or bad repution, b2b market) and, above all, the social networks side. Imagine you managed to develop the brand, deliver your message, that people are getting interested in what the company is, what its business is. And imagine that, one day, Directors X and Y rush into you office and say : we need the phone numbers and emails of all our “Facebook Fans”, of all our followers on twitter…then disqualify, block,  all those who don’t have the power / the position to make their company buy our products. What would your reaction be ?

Some may argue that, things will have to change whether businesses like it or not anyway. Even IBM tells us that advertising as we used to know is dead. Conclusion : the goold old lead generation is dead, goodbye vultures and welcome teddy bears ! I have to admit that I would really like it to happen (as for me, I can’t stand giving any personal information to know more about a product…rather contact the contenders if they are more open and friendly…and don’t try to contact me…I’ll find you if I need to)…..but I’m quite skeptical about that.

Maybe both methods could lead to the same results. But there’s nothing sure, and even if it was possible it would take more time, what is something businesses are running out of. So should we throw the baby out with the bathwater ? No, there are indisputable trends that will make businesses change the way they behave. But the answer is not in choosing the one and the other, it’s to find the right balance according to the context, the need, the target. Territories will have to be well defined and “traditionalists” will surely have to learn some good manners.

According to me, both will co-exist and will be assigned to different people who will have to learn to understand each other and work together. Extremists will have to make concessions anyway. At the end, it’s the action of selling that will be deeply transformed. You didn’t know ? Traditional selling is dead and salespeople will have to learn how to be counselors instead of haggling over everything.

More questions than answers here…but a surely a future hot topic.

And you, marketing and sales professionals, what do you think about that ?

lead generation, marketing, social crm, vente,attention

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So if you live in the Valley and want to be a part of the adventure, just click here to learn more.

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First point, as mentioned in the post where I found this document, there’s  nothing really new. Many of these issues have been discussed for years, some are more recent but even when names change, the topics themselves don’t.

Second point : cloud computing is on the top of the list. That’s the evidence, but did we need some more, that the topic is really a true current concern. But we have to be careful and don’t make numbers say what they don’t : being interested in something does not mean adopting it, it even may mean finding arguments to find it. As a friend of mine who works as a plane pilot, often says : “The reason why I’m interested in plane crashes is because I want to avoid them, not because I want to have one”. Behind, nothing emerges (I don’t consider the difference between 47% and 51% as significant).

Third point, the most interesting one in my opinion : the link between many of these topics. BI and BPM : don’t you think that one the the current challenges is to enrich BPM with BI ? Aren’t wikis, blogs etc.. and collaboration tools the two sides of one only thing ? By the way, to enrich BI, isn’t it necessary to harness the value contained into the unstructured information carried by blogs, wikis and social networks ? Good news : social networks come one rank behind. As for content management, isn’t it the formal alter ego of social medias ? Here again, two sides of one global issued.

So, at first sight, there’s a kind of coherence that is a good news. On the other side I’m afraid that all these issues may be thought independantly, without any articulation between one and another just when they must be thought jointly if we don’t want to see things that are complementary by nature confront each other. Keep in mind that operations are expecting such a coherent and integrated approach from the IT depts instead of technological projects isolated the one from the other which lack of coherence have negative impacts on adoption and value creation.

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