Bertrand Duperrin's Notepad

From noise to situational intelligence

Bertrand DUPERRIN — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 14:00:20 +0000

Sumary : many users say that the problem that enterprise social platforms is the risk of infobesity and informational noise. Reality is more complex. As for infobesity, these platformes only collect information and have few impact on the fact people and systems generate more. The problem is more about how to distribute this information. Then comes things like activity streams and micro-blogging tools that raise another question : what’s necessary and what’s superfluous. In fact there’s a new context organizations and people are not very comfortable with. In a complex business world, it’s essentiel to feel signals to act and adapt permanently to external events that impact one. Feeling does not mean deep reading and understanding. Employees will have to learn to optimize their situational intelligence by making the most of the surrounding noise without being submerged by it.

On the one hand we see enterprises thinking about a more efficient way than email to organize information flows, exchanges, collaboration and information sharing. On the other hand the alternate solution also bring their own questions and fears.

As I recently said, after a large french company decided to ban internal emails :” that won’t decrease the amount of information that will only move to other places”. As a matter of fact it’s more about changing how one manage and deal with information flows than changing tools.

As a matter of fact, social software platforms will be more and more like “catch all”. As they improve in terms of functionalities, they will soon be able to catch anything any information produced, whatever its form or the software that produced it. Some think it may lead to infobesity but that’s not my opinion. Any information that need to be generated will be generated, the social platform only being the receiver, the container. We can even think that such platforms will help to prevent content replication across different systems.

The problem is not about information catching but information redistribution. From the user side, it means wondering what needs to be pushed to him and what should only be made available for whom searches it (improved by suggestion mechanisms to address the grey zone between both. Something bizarre since we are all deeply influenced by current approaches that, despite of the fact we’re submerged by too much pushed information, we still fear to miss something so we do nothing to clean up our information flows.

Two components of these new platforms raise questions : activity streams and micro-blogging tools that generate information flows in which many fear to drown themselves. What lead us to wonder if we need so much information and if it’s really useful.

The answer to “do we need so much information” is “no”..or rather “no..but”. It’s again about the difference between pushed and available information. With a funny side : with email people suffer from information overload while, on social platforms, they overload themselves their flow…what leads to the same result. It’s not about tools but about a personal approach to information management, what is a very rare skill and a matter people are not very mature one.

On the tool side, we are looking forward to seeing system embedding more intelligence to filter, prioritize, hierarchize according to context. Meanwhile, hand-held filtering tools are becoming mainstream.

Then comes the question that needs the more education because it’s a real copernican revolution : “is everything useful ?”

Anyone is not used to such uses of information flows and does not use it every day will say “most of these information, status updates…are useless. That’s only noise”. With experience, it”s easy to realize that this surrounding nose has value and is very close to what I call situational intelligence.

But how to explain explain that, at the same time, noise is necessary but has not be be heard or read ?

Let’s start with an assumption : in everyone’s work, on-the-flow coordination is key, as well as knowing what’s happening here and there to act and adapt. So it’s essential to catch the signals that helps us to act the right way at the right moment. And, as our environment is getting more complex everyday, that our own situation is more and more influenced by what other do or say….

Now, imagine you’re driving a car. Do you focus on what’s ahead and on your dashboard ? Most of all when driving downtown, what is a more complex environment than an highway ? Of course you don’t. You catch surrounding signals. Someone who seems to be about to cross the road, a car approaching the traffic lights a little but too fast, a kid that walks, then is hidden by a van but may appear 3 seconds later…on your bumpers. You can’t tell what can of car ir is, say if the person is a man or a woman or if the kid is blond or dark-haired. But you are aware that something is happening that may have an impact on your driving, on a decision you’ll have to make a couple of seconds later, that suggest you become more vigilant and focused and even tells you to break or pull on the wheel.

That’s exactly the same with activity streams and micro-blogging tools. The fact a piece of information comes, even for a second, in my vision, even if I had only read half the title of the alert, makes me aware of something and may lead to an immediate (I need to do..) or future (I should take it into account) action.

But what makes on adopt the right behaviors, the best way of using such tools ? That they filter the right rights, make the most of it without being submerged ?

That’s the problem that makes organizations very uncomffortable because they would like a 3 steps methodology saying “do that and it will be ok”. As for driving, it’s a matter of experience, habits. One learn by usage and the first steps are often uncomfortable..but going through this step is mandatory.

Maybe next generation employees will be more comfortable with that when they’ll enter the market. We may even hope that new approaches to education will help them improve the way they use, in a business context, these tools they know quite well in their private life. Meanwhile, the transition will be hard but necessary.

Links for this week (weekly)

Diigo — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 16:30:41 +0000

L’entreprise sociale et le RSI: n’y a-t-il que des bénéfices intangibles ?

“Dans le cas de l’entreprise sociale (ou Web 2.0) comme dans le cas de l’entreprise intranet dans les années 90, c’est très difficile d’aligner les chiffres quand les stratégies totalement nouvelles avec des outils technologiques tout aussi nouveaux sont introduits et génèrent en plus des changements organisationnels majeurs. Il faut du temps avant de pouvoir compter sur des études de cas sérieuses et bien documentées.”

tags: enterprise2.0 socialbusiness casestudies ROI tangiblebenefits value ideagoras innovation
- un, la grille des bénéfices tangibles n’offre aucun chiffre donc, demeure théorique. Deux: les chiffres existent, surtout aux USA et surtout dans le cas des idéagoras ou si vous préférez, agoras d’idées, ces plates-formes de «crowdsourcing» qui servent de moteurs 2.0 à l’innovation.
- Le défi a été relevé par 1 200 participants de 50 pays. Pas moins de 110 cibles ont ainsi été identifiées dont 50% non identifiées par les géologues. Pas moins de 80% des cibles ont produit des quantités appréciables d’or (8 million d’onces). On a ainsi coupé de trois ans le temps d’exploration et surtout transformé la valeur de l’entreprise la faisant passer de 100 millions$ à 9 milliards$. Vous dire que les actionnaires étaient contents est un euphémisme car 100$ investis en 1993 en valaient 3 000$ en 2005.
Transforming the Way We Work

“Nine years ago, when I launched The Energy Project during an economic boom, it was nearly impossible to find senior leaders open to the idea that demand was exceeding people’s capacity, and that it was critical to the bottom line to teach employees new ways to manage their energy more skillfully.”

tags: work management engagement trust distraction satisfaction burnout emotionalintelligence sustainableperformance performance wellbeing
- ully engaged at work, valued for their contributions, or freed and trusted to do what they do best. Instead, they feel weighed down by multiple demands and distractions and they often don’t derive much meaning or satisfaction from their work.
- I don’t kid myself that the super-charged CEOs and world leaders who attend this event are going to wake up overnight to the recognition that rest and renewal and doing one thing at a time are not only healthy practices, but also fuel more sustainable performance.
- Rather than trying to forever get more out of their employees, organizations are better served by investing in better meeting their people’s core needs — physical, emotional, mental and spiritual — so they’re freed, fueled, and inspired to bring more of themselves to work every day.
tibbr 3.5 turns the world into interactive post-its

“Tibbr released version 3.5 to the public today in Palo Alto California, 9 AM Pacific time. I got a solo preview yesterday and I was impressed by it – as usual I’d say.
“In twelve months since launch, tibbr has been deployed to hundreds of thousands of employees across global enterprises, who can now use tibbr to unify people, data and businesses processes to get work done””

tags: tibbr tibo enterprisesocialsoftware process socialnetwork vendors exception tibbrGEO augmentedreality
- tibbr brings back the balance in our lives: after decades of automation and computerisation, some, if not most, of us have become slaves to the machine, walking the last mile from rule-based machines to exception-based humans
- The fact that tibbr cut out the middle man, the data entry clerk, by enabling people to follow and directly subscribe to events themselves – people could pick the low-hanging fruits again
- tibbr’s new feature would have come in handy: tibbr GEO. In the example above, you’d simply subscribe to your points of interest, e.g. grocery, bakery and the beer section, hold up your mobile in front of you and let the augmented reality guide you through the store
- Of course that would mean that everyone goes out and gets tibbr. I’m sure tibbr wouldn’t mind that, but that does mean that tibbr has to be really device- and platform-agnostic, and stay that way.
Are You Learning as Fast as the World Is Changing?

“Tom Kelly, general manager of IDEO, the world-renowned design firm, likes to quote French novelist Marcel Proust, who famously said, “The real act of discovery consists not in finding new lands but in seeing with new eyes.” What goes for novelists goes for leaders searching to craft a novel strategy for their company, a new product for their customers, or a better way to organize their employees. In a world that never stops changing, great leaders never stop learning.”

tags: leadership learning change CxO CEO ideas R&D innovation
- Today, the challenge for leaders at every level is no longer just to out-hustle, out-muscle, and out-maneuver the competition. It is to out-think the competition in ways big and small, to develop a unique point of view about the future and help your organization get there before anyone else does
- First, the best leaders (and learners) have the widest field of vision.
- Translation: You’re not going to learn faster (or deeper) than everyone else if you seek inspiration from the same sources as everyone else.
- Second, and more tactically, the best source of new ideas in your field can be old ideas from unrelated fields.
- For example, leaders at Lexus identified all sorts of new ideas to reshape the customer experience for luxury cars by searching for clues at brands such as Four Seasons and Apple
- Physicians and administrators from London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children redesigned many of their surgical procedures by studying how Ferrari’s Formula One racing team handled pit stops.
- Sure, there’s always a place for R&D as research & development. But there’s also a place for R&D as rip-off and duplicate. Ideas that are routine in one industry can be revolutionary when they migrate to another industry
- Finally, and most personally, successful learners work hard not to be loners. These days, the most powerful insights often come from the most unexpected places — the hidden genius locked inside your company, the collective genius of customers, suppliers, and other smart people who would be eager to teach you what they know if you simply asked for their insights.
Enterprise 2.0 in Europe (and the Enterprise 2.0 Summit)

“In this post, Bjoern Negelmann suggests that German preference for decentralisation leads to a focus on knowledge sharing between co-workers as the basis for their enterprise 2.0 activities. In France however, the preference is for social networking leading to a focus on relationships (“the indirect / network effects of being interconnected”).”

tags: enterprise2.0 France Germany groupcollectivism assertiveness unvertainty culture USA collaboration risk
- In Group Collectivism Germany 4.0 – France 4.4
- Assertiveness Germany 4.6 – France 4.1
- Uncertainty Avoidance Germany 5.2 – France 4.4
- Future Orientation Germany 4.3 – France 3.5
- It’s more difficult to work through how Europe differs from the US however. The US’ scores for in group collectivism are similar to France and its assertiveness more like Germany. Its scores for uncertainty avoidance are similar to France and its future orientation to Germany. I’m not sure how this supports differences I’ve seen between Europe and the US, but then I’m not too sure how I’d describe these differences anyway –
9 Magic Metrics Your Organization Needs to Adopt

“It’s rare a singular metric like turnover or a customer survey score is by itself a good measure of an organization’s performance. Most of the more meaningful measures on dashboards of executives today are indices, made up of three to five submeasures. I review the nine most useful and creative performance measures I have seen in government and business organizations over the last few years.”

tags: intangiblesmanagement intangible intangibleassets intangiblecapital metrics communication effectiveness customerrelationship satisfaction employeesatisfaction distraction trust aggravation suppliers partners projectmanagement intellectualcapital
- Communication Effectiveness — An important metric for organizations is one that measures how well they communicate to employees, suppliers, shareholders and others
- Customer Relationships — Customer surveys are rarely effective in measuring the level of relationship an organization has with its clients or customers.
- Employee Satisfaction — Most clients in government and business have developed an Employee Satisfaction Index made up of a variety of measures such as casual absenteeism, complaints/grievances, voluntary turnover, employee focus groups, overtime and employee survey data
- Distraction Index –
- Employees in several firms I’ve worked with found they spent less than a third of their time doing their jobs
- Trust Index
- Aggravation Index — A number of leading organizations have daily measures to track how much they aggravate their customers or how difficult it is to do business with their firm.
- Supplier/Partner Index –
- Project Management Index — Measuring recurring work like processing transactions or manufacturing parts is different than measuring projects where each one is somewhat different
- ntellectual Capital — Everyone agrees that intellectual capital or competencies are important to measure, but I have rarely seen good metrics in this area.
Deploying Apple at IBM

“I presented at the MacWorld,/iWorld, MacIT conference with my colleague, Cary Thomas in San Francisco last week. We presented on deploying Apple (Mac, iPhone, iPad) inside IBM.”

tags: apple casestudies deployment IBM ipad iphone
OpenSocial and the Future of Social Business

“OpenSocial is a specification that defines a browser-based component model, known as gadgets, and an API for accessing information about user profile information and social graphs, including friends and activities. Applications that use the OpenSocial APIs can be embedded within a social network itself, or access a site’s social data from anywhere on the web. [Sources: Wikipedia and Opensocial.org]“

tags: opensocial sociabusiness activitystream gadgets search unifiedsearch
- new features announced for OpenSocial 2.0 include embedded user experiences (allowing user interaction with content from external services), better support for Activity Streams, support for mobile experiences, support for OAuth 2.0 (better unified identity authorization across applications), and more open search capabilities (designed to prevent social applications from becoming new corporate information silos).
- OpenSocial has gained solid support from enterprise software vendors such as Jive, SAP, SocialText, IBM, Nuxeo, Atlassian and others.
Dans l’économie des idées, valeur et productivité du travail sont remises en question |

“Les modèles économiques du 19e siècle ne sont plus pertinents. L’économie des savoirs modifie nos modes de travail mais aussi la valeur et la productivité du travail. Sans pour autant améliorer la redistribution – qui lui sert de justificatif- la prégnance de l’Etat français sur l’économie productive déséquilibre définitivement le partage de la valeur entre les acteurs économiques. “

tags: businessmodel innovation ideas value productivity valuecreation
- Adam Smith, écossais auteur de la « Richesse des Nations », ne considérait pas le travail du médecin, ni du chansonnier, comme créateur de valeur. Pour lui, le travail ne pouvait être associé qu’à des activités dites matérielles. Inutile de dire que ces thèses étaient mal armées pour supporter l’avènement de l’économie immatérielle.
- Aussi sait-on au nom de la sacro sainte « productivité du travail » réduire le stock de travail dans les entreprises tout en continuant à créer de la valeur. Valeur qui dépend largement des apports de l’intellect des intervenants dans leur entreprise.
- le résultat économique d’une activité donnée ne varie pas proportionnellement au facteur « temps de travail
- Un Etat prédateur qui face à la perte de compétitivité de la France feint de n’en rien comprendre pour perpétuer des prélèvements qui manqueront ensuite aux entreprises pour créer emplois et activités nouvelles, notamment dans les secteurs mobilisant une « main d’œuvre à forte intensité de connaissances ».
- Le salarié de notre époque est devenu un constituant du capital immatériel de l’entreprise créant un paradoxe entre l’unité d’œuvre ancienne qu’était le coût du travail horaire (le temps) et le coût du savoir (la valeur de l’expérience).
- Les évolutions des produits puis des services ont une caractéristique unique : l’incorporation importante d’expériences et de savoirs. Ce sont ces actes de transformation plus ou moins élaborés et sophistiqués qui incarnent le capital immatériel, la valeur ajoutée perçue par le marché, par les clients. A l’heure du travailleur du savoir, une des fonctions principales des collaborateurs d’aujourd’hui consiste à rendre un certain nombre de services mais aussi à fournir des idées. Ils
- Quelle que soit la quantité de travail, les apports des savoirs et des idées constituent autant d’apports précieux à l’augmentation du capital immatériel de l’entreprise qui peut être rentabilisé en de multiples occasions.
- Au fil des années, la déconnexion entre le temps de travail traditionnel et la création de richesses apparaît de plus en plus évidente
- Encore faut-il au préalable casser les réflexes qui lient incongrûment productivité et coût du travail, coût du travail et création de valeur ajoutée.
- Le conflit culturel entre les dirigeants qui considèrent normale l’activité inventive de leurs salariés payés par l’entreprise, et les salariés qui considèrent que son développement tient aussi à leurs apports constants de valeur ajoutée doit, faute d’une entente sur la diminution des prélèvements sur le travail, trouver son équilibre autour de rémunérations additionnelles, libérées des charges sociales
- Le partage des royalties tirées du droit de copyright commence à être utilisées dans certains cas pour récompenser des salariés ou collaborateurs participant à des activités éditoriales dans des secteurs les plus divers
- Il n’est plus rare de constater que des entreprises tentent de desserrer l’étau des charges en imaginant des sources de revenus qui peuvent, en limitant leur poids corriger certaines inégalités et déséquilibres dans le partage de la richesse créée par les forces du travail et du capital.
- il devient impératif que les partenaires sociaux laissent tomber les oripeaux de la luttes des classes pour défendre leurs outils de travail et s’emparent du sujet afin de libérer des points de pouvoir d’achat et, dans l’idéal, d’obtenir qu’ils n’aient à supporter d’autres prélèvements que ceux de la CSG et des impôts.
Interview de Yves Caseau à propos de collaboration et de lean management

“Toujours en préambule du E2.0 Summit qui va se tenir à Paris les 7 et 8 février prochain, je vous propose une nouvelle interview d’un des intervenants principaux : Yves Caseau, le DGA de Bouygues Telecom en charge des technologies et de l’innovation dont je vous avais déjà parlé du livre (Un livre pour tout savoir sur la collaboration et le lean management).

Je vous livre ici une traduction de l’interview menée par l’organisateur de la conférence.”

tags: enterprise2.0 process lean leanmanagement collaboration book yvescazeau structuredcollaboration unstructuredcollaboration emergentcollaboration emergentprocesses management decisionmaking
- L’objectif des initiatives d’Entreprise 2.0 vis à accélérer le processus de décision (pour faire face aux exigences de notre environnement compétitif), ceux-ci reposent sur une propagation rapide de l’information et sur la capacité à passer la bonne information à la bonne personne. Les pratiques « 2.0″ sont donc employées pour optimiser l’attention des collaborateurs et pour maximiser l’utilisation des talents.
- La modularité est nécessaire au sein d’une organisation, 2.0 ou non. Je suis partisan d’une approche « fractale » où les pratiques de collaboration s(organisent autour de communautés de toute taille. Idéalement, on ne devrait pas abuser d’usages communautaires à l’échelle de l’entreprise. Il y a également un défi à éviter la sur-utilisation des outils de communication « 2.0″, à trouver la bonne culture de collaboration et définir les bonnes pratiques.
- Mon parti-pris est de dire que les activités les plus complexes devraient utiliser des modèles d’auto-organisation reposant sur la collaboration.
- Processus et Entreprise 2.0 sont les deux faces d’une même pièce. D’un côté, les pratiques de collaboration améliorent les organisations centrées sur les processus (la collaboration complète la coopération) ; mais d’un autre côté, les processus ont un effet bénéfique sur la collaboration, principalement en réduisant le risque d’infobésité
- Ce sont deux approches qui fonctionnent de façon indépendante, mais pas incompatible.
- Ce n’est pas tant une question d’image que de culture et la façon dont les managers envisagent leur rôle dans la structure
- La solution à ce problème de complexité et de rigidité est de faire évoluer la perception qu’ont les manageurs d’eux-mêmes et l’autre part serait de faire évoluer les habitudes de travail.
- L’urgence et la volonté doit venir du haut : du CEO et de l’encadrement supérieur. Le changement que l’on constate actuellement vient d’en bas, où l’autonomie est de rigueur et où l’auto-promotion donne les meilleurs résultats.
- Très clairement, il convient de ne pas trop modéliser les processus métier et laisser de la marge pour qu’émerge de l’auto-organisation et de la collaboration informelle.
- La caractéristique de l’entreprise du futur est que les acteurs des processus métier fassent ce travail de formalisation / structuration et non les experts ou les managers.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

The collective is not always the answer

Bertrand DUPERRIN — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:00:16 +0000

Summary : one of the assumption on which many enterprise projects rely is that the collective is better than the sum of the individuals that composes it. This have been proven being right many times. But is it that simple ? In systems that struggle at jointing people and groups, in which people have more and more difficulties to see to see what is their contribution to a global purpose and what this purpose is, there are three obvious risks. The first is to built an organizations in which the collective makes no sense. The second is to use the collective to avoid facing individual issues, a way to blame others for one’s lacks. The third, on the enterprise side, is to believe that the social or 2.0 orgnanization will be the remedy for irrelevant processus no one dares changing.

More ideas can be found in ten heads than in a single one. 100 people are stronger than ten. Crowds are wiser than individuals. We are more efficient when we act together as a living organism than as a sum of individuals. As many facts and assumptions that make organizations think about 2.0 or social approaches of work. With some “magic words” raised as remedies to all diseases : “communities”, “network”, “ties”, “together”.

But do these approaches come without shortcomings ?

Implementing those approaches and the tools that support them often aim at improving collective dynamics through more efficient interactions between resources, bewteen those who have something to do and those who can help them to do better and faster. Gathering and exchanging seem to be the cornerstones of these approaches. But :

• Interacting is not producing : conversations, exchanges are preparatory to action but, in the end, there’s still one person that has to deliver something, make a decision, act. People co-innovate, co-design but action is still an individual issue. One may mention co-writing something with solutions like Google Docs as an exception. But, with a closer look, it appears that someone always have to “clean up” the document, align styles and ideas. Doing so helps a lot a the beginning but anyone who once had to do this cleaning job on a document written by 4 or 10 people can tell it’s like hell. The more basic unit of work, the task, is and will remain an individual issue if we adopt an execution driven point of view.

• many organizations trie to use the collective as a remedy for individual discipline, accountability, professionalism issues. If one does not behave as a professional when managing his tasks, its workload, gathering everyone won’t solve the problem. Things may even get worse because of unproductive interactions that won’t improve anything, no one having done the preparatory work needed to make group discussions productive.

• the focus is put where there problem isn’t, avoiding to tackle what’s core, and accountability moves from individuals to the group. “If I don’t do that, the community will”. SInce everybody thinks the same, the collective does not do anything. Remember that a community is nothing more than a gathering of individuals who may have their own priorities and agendas. When the community does something, it only means that one or some of its members have individually decided to move forward. So we thank the community while, in many cases, only one of its members should be thanked. Communities don’t move forward if, at least, one member does not decide to.

• but organizations are doing the same mistakes. “If we bring employees to communities, if we make them more social, they’ll make up for our crappy processes without us having to work on that”. On the contrary, these dynamics need strong processes to give people reasons and time to move toward the collective.

In short, the collective needs high individual performance to work. It can reinforce individual performance but can’t replace a minimum everyone should do on his own.

Is this going against the belief that social helps ordinary people to do extraordinary things ? Not really. Only a reminder that says that the collective won’t move forward if individuals don’t. This is not a matter of ordinary people or not but of professionalism, seriousness in individual work. Extraordinary things can be made by ordinary people…provided they don’t act with mediocrity (what can also happen to extraordinary people…) or without accountability.

This reminds me of a couple of things :

• Claude Onesta (coach of the french handball team, world, european and olympic champions in a row, famous for his coaching and leadership skills), interviewed about collective excellence, saying “The collective ? Don’t make me laugh ! First, it’s 7 guys at their top, mastering their job and game systems, who know what to do and can do it perfectly. Then comes the collective. But with 7 average players or 7 very good but not concerned ones, the collective won’t make you win any medal”.

• One day, while we were discussing this issue, someone told me :”can a collectively efficient system work without a good management by objective at the individual level ?”. An idea that contradicts the one according to which too much individual measurement kills collaboration ? No. It’s all in the way it’s balanced, in order the collective is seen as a response to individual needs and not as a shelter or a burden.

It’s all about how people understand their role in a wider and global mechanism and the way they contribute to it, as well as the way the mechanism can also help them to move forward. This is a very vague concept for lots of employees are lost in their own organisation, not understanding the sense or the impact of what’s expected from them and seeing the collective as a burden or an easy way to hide, but not a way to move forward.

That’s clearly and HR and organizational challenge. Enterprises need to make sense of work, joint the “I” and the “we” while not falling in the trap of thinking that social will replace individual accountability and fix outdated processes that need more flexibility to be efficient and manageable.

Is measuring online influence bad for customer service ?

Bertrand DUPERRIN — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:00:34 +0000

Summary : now that lots of tools exist to measure online influence (or whatever we think it is), businesses are perfectly tooled to target their messages and communication programs. Provided they get the notion of influence right. On the other hand there’s another trend that may be dangerous in the future : using a tool that’s adapted to one shot operations to systematically define the level of service and advantages a customer deserves. This may lead to decreasing the standard level of service and break the relationship with true loyal customers that will notice that his loyalty and financial contribution are less valued than the number of followers others may have.

Now that anyone can exist on the web, the worldwide network as become a wonderful platforms to measure one’s influence. And this concept has been brilliantly sold to internauts and businesses. The first need to become influent to exist, the second need to know who’s influent in their ecosystem. And guess what ? Agencies and vendors all have “the” solutions that will measure influence in an objective and undisputable way. Influent internauts will benefit from a kind of “recognition label” and businesses will be able to focus their efforts on those who deserve it (understand : serve influencers better).

Such an approach my distract businesses from what matters and lead them to failure.

Let’s start with influence. Influence on the web has been a very trendy topic for years but no objective definition of what an influencers is has really emerged. It’s not easy to do anything when no one know what it’s about. The upside is that anyone can use his own definition, what surely makes his solution unique. Is influence a matter auf audience size ? Everybody says no…but no one can neglect such an easy way to reach many people. But being listened is one thing, influencing is another. No credibility matters in the definition. But how to measure it ? Most of all, influence has to do with context : one can’t be credible on everything. A couple of example :

• Mary has tens of thousands followers on twitter. Influencer ? Yes for some, not for others that will say she’s “negatively followed”, because of our mistakes, hand people follow her to see ser fail.

• Robert has 200 followers? Influencer ? Surely not. But he’s a specialist of frog breeding in polluted urban environments. He’s very influent in his niche. But only when he talks about frogs.

• Kevin has thousands of followers and is very influent on digital marketing. All industry professionals recognize he’s in the top 10 list. But when he talks about restaurants, knowing his taste (or lack of) no one listens to him. Bad news for the famous 3 stars restaurant that offered him a free lunch, expecting a mention from Kevin.

So, we can use any criteria and even admit that one may be positively influent while negatively popular (people follow him to make fun…but they follow), one thing is sure, influence is vague and subjective.

But since there are a lot of services offering to measure influence on the web, businesses logically wonder what they could do with it.

What did we see these last months ? Events where anyone could go…provided their “Klout” was high enough (Klout is one of this tools supposed to assess how influent people are). Businesses also use such tools to prioritize customer service and even do “a little bit more” for some. Hotels are using similar tools to decide whether upgrading customers or not.

After all, there’s nothing bad here ? What can be reproached to a business favoring, among its customers, those who are the most listened to ? Those with the louder voice ? Nothing if we only consider it’s a communication operation. But, seen from the customer service side, they’re moving on a slippery ground.

A first discussion is about what makes business change their level of service depending on customer influence. Wouldn’t the norm be, for any business respectful of its customers, to provide the same service for any customer paying the same price ? Isn’t it like saying to average customers that even if they are ready to pay a premium they won’t be treated as well as an influencer paying less ?

That leads to discussing the difference between influencers and loyal customers. A couple of months again I hear ; “Ah… XXXXX got a great gift from….YYYYYY, even if never use their services and has few reasons to do. I’m paying them thousands of euros every year and what do I get in return ? ok… he has 6000 followers more than me”. Trying to turn XXXX into a returning customer is a good idea. Using him has an advertising support may also be useful from a short term point of view…but nothing more. The impact on loyal returning customers may be a disaster. Maybe YYYYY did not have any customer with more than 200 followers ? And do what ? Wouldn’t it have been a better deal ? Qualified people whose loyalty is rewarded ? I told to someone at the agency that organized this “instead a multi-usage influencer, did you try to match your influencer base with the customer loyal customers database ?”. The answer was : “What for ?”.

Let’s back to the discussion. Taking one’s influence into consideration to manage customer relationship may be a good idea provided it’s not used to systematically define what one deserves. In this case, two things may happen :

- having a dual customer service that will lead to less service for any customer. The only fact loyal customers feel they are less well treated than onfluents already decreases the perceived value of the service…as well as his will to keep paying for it.

- devaluation of loyalty programs, most all all regarding to how well non-loyal influents will be treated.

- I don’t even mention side effects on internauts that will try to become influents instead of loyal to a brand because influence is more rewarded.

How to prevent that ? Make sure that what is used for one-shot operations won’t become a standard and focus on influent customers rather than looking for influents that are not customers and pay more attention to what you’ll give than to you. Don’t forget to think in terms of “shared value” and think first about those who make the organization live every day.

Influence is nice. But building a long term relationship based on trust, invest on quality and reward loyalty may even be more rewarding for any business.

One more thing…there are are people that are very influent in their lives and are active on the web (yes…I promise…such people exist). So the question is : are businesses looking for valuable relays or just to make the most of a given media. Other debate…

Links for this week (weekly)

Diigo — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 16:30:32 +0000

Le dialogue social 2.0 : une nouvelle approche du dialogue dans l’entreprise?

“J’ai eu la chance de pouvoir participer à la tout première réunion de négociation que nous avons lancé avec nos partenaires sociaux sur le thème du Dialogue Sociale 2.0

Derrière ce terme propre à faire du buzz, il y a un réel enjeu pour tous les acteurs d’une entreprise. Je pense qu’il est donc important de s’en préoccuper dès maintenant et surtout de ne pas oublier que les propos que je vais tenir ici ne s’appliquent pas uniquement à l’utilisation des réseaux sociaux mais bien de continuer à promouvoir le dialogue dans une entreprise.”

tags: hr hr2.0 unions
- le réseau social est un outil. La discussion ne doit pas porter sur ce thème en préambule mais bien comme moyen d’atteindre un objectif clair, en l’occurence comment penser le dialogue social de demain.
- je crois énormément au besoin de se voir physiquement. Par contre, je suis persuadé que nous passons trop de temps à nous voir, à discuter, à ne pas se mettre d’accord et ce pour tout et n’importe quel sujet.
- Le tract reste important car il permet aux élus de rencontrer physiquement leurs électeurs…Il faudra toujours allier le réel au virtuel.
- 1. le réseau social doit permettre aux élus de se rapprocher des salariés de l’entreprise. Ils doivent donc accepter d’entendre les remontées de tous les salariés et donc de savoir réagir si ils s’aperçoivent qu’ils ne répondent pas à toutes les attentes de leurs électeurs.
- En tant que RH, nous devons accepter que le dialogue puisse s’installer et donc devoir répondre à des questions qui ne font pas plaisir
- 2. Cela doit permettre à la France de paraître et d’être plus agile. Il est malheureusement trop fréquent qu’on entende :”en France de toute façon tout est compliqué” ou alors “les français disent d’abord non c’est pas possible avant de faire avancer les choses”. Ces propos que j’ai trop souvent entendu sont quelque peu exagérer mais également vrai
- Bien que je considère ces négociations légitimes et fortement utiles je pense que nous pourrions les améliorer pour nosu permettre de gagner en agilité et donc en réactivité et ce pour répondre aux besoins du business.
- 3. Cela doit permettre de favoriser le lien entre le central et le local
- .Ben entendu, il est évident que chacun doit garder ses propres prérogatives mais un peu plus de liaison pourrait faciliter bon nombre d’échanges
Le collaboratif n’est pas un usage spontané

“Le Crédit Mutuel Arkéa réunit les fédérations de Crédit Mutuel de Bretagne, du Sud-Ouest et du Massif Central ainsi qu’une vingtaine de filiales spécialisées qui couvrent tous les métiers de la banque, de la finance et de l’assurance. Le groupe, composé de 9000 salariés, s’est doté il y a un an d’un Intranet collaboratif. Philippe Bancourt, le responsable Intranet, détaille cette évolution majeure.”

tags: intranet intranet2.0 creditmutuel arkea casestudies collaboration portal customization
- Les utilisateurs peuvent ainsi commenter les informations – un peu à la Facebook – et produire leurs propres contenus documentaires, via un wiki ouvert à tous. Chaque service créé ses propres documents et les partage librement.
- Tout le monde utilise donc le même outil, tout le monde peut émettre de l’information. Mais pour certaines thématiques, les accès de consultation sont protégés.
- Mais malgré la communication, chacun pense toujours que sa situation de travail est différente de celle de son collègue
- C’est le cas des collaborateurs qui sont issus d’autres horizons, qui ont changé de poste ou de métier ainsi que celui des plus jeunes qui n’hésitent pas à partager leurs connaissances.
Is Collaboration Overrated?

How many prospects does it take to buy a light bulb?

More than ever it seems, thanks to social networks and a plethora of great collaborative software solutions. Maybe the question should be “how many committees does it take to buy a light bulb?” At least the number will be smaller.

The benefits of ubiquitous conversations are undeniably clear, including shorter decision cycles. Thanks to collaborative technology, we have the ability to ask anyone, anywhere, any time, “Hey, got a minute?” Click to collaborate! How good is that? But every new solution creates new problems. When do business processes become engorged on 24/7 collaboration, and implode into a digital morass of bypassed Outlook meeting requests and defunct online communities?”

tags: collaboration conversations solitude teams creativity introverts innovation knowledgeworkers committee effectiveness
- “solitude is out of fashion . . . most of us now work in teams, in offices without walls, for managers who prize people skills above all. Lone geniuses are out. Collaboration is in.
- And the most spectacularly creative people in many fields are often introverted, according to studies by the psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Gregory Feist
- Work alone . . . not on a committee. Not on a team.
- The point is, as knowledge workers, we’re more knowledgeable when collaborating than when we’re not. And, by extension, we’re assuming more effective, too.
- the success of any economy depends on the velocity of commerce.” And the velocity of commerce depends on the velocity of decision making
Sam Palmisano’s Transformation of IBM

“When Sam Palmisano retired as CEO of IBM on Dec. 31, it marked the end of one of the most remarkable tenures in corporate history. Over his decade as IBM’s leader, he made a number of moves, each instructive, but their power came from their cumulative effect in the transformation of a good company back into a great one.”

tags: management leadership strategy sampalmisano lougerstner organization empowerment casestudies accountability values
- That council of barons was replaced by teams for strategy, technology, and operations whose members included the next generation of operating leaders.
- The consulting arm of PriceWaterhouseCoopers was bought to provide thousands of professionals who understood the process needs of key industries. In a near-miraculous feat of management, those consultants were partnered with technologists and successfully integrated into the company.
- To help frame the thinking of these dispersed IBMer’s, a three-day, 24-hour on-line town hall was held for some 150,000 employees — IBM called it a Jam — to define the values by which IBM would be operated and its people held accountable.
Are All Employees Knowledge Workers?

“Ask executives to identify the talent within their firm and many will focus on the top tiers of management. Often, they will include in this august group the “high potentials” being groomed for leadership roles. Sometimes, they will extend the boundaries to include “creative talent” or “knowledge workers”. But then there is the rest of the workforce.”

tags: knowledgeworkers employees creativity creativeclass highpotentials tacitroles problemsolving collaboration talent rightbrain
- But his focus on the creative class unintentionally diminishes the potential contributions from other parts of the workforce.
- When executives focus on “knowledge workers”, they lose sight of the fact that even highly routinized jobs require improvisation and the use of judgment in ambiguous situations, especially if the goal is to drive performance to new levels
- Even the most “routine” work is becoming far less so while our mindsets about our workforce continue to hold on to comfortable categories.
- we need to focus on more creative “right brain” jobs
- Perhaps the single greatest lesson from Japanese auto manufacturers is that all employees are ultimately knowledge workers and that the role of the firm is to both encourage and support problem-solving by all employees
- In encouraging and supporting problem-solving by these employees, the Japanese auto makers were able to give their work new meaning and unleashed much more passion on the factory floor. The lesson is clear: we undermine our potential for performance improvement with labels that draw artificial boundaries through our workforce.
- We will begin to redefine all jobs, especially those performed at the front line (or, in an image, that reveals our prevalent management mindset, the “bottom” of the institutional pyramid), in ways that facilitate problem solving, experimentation, and tinkering
Demystifying Enterprise Gamification

tags: gamification video engagement adoption
Le risque de l’idéologie du groupe

“La lecture de la semaine, il s’agit d’un article du New York Times transmis par une aimable correspondante. Il s’intitule : “La domination de la nouvelle idéologie du groupe”, et on le doit à Susan Cain, auteure d’un ouvrage sur la question intitulé Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking (Silence : le pouvoir des introvertis dans un monde qui n’arrête pas de parler).”

tags: groups introverts collectiveintelligence collaboration focus brainstorming teams teamwork creativity meetings trust openspace internet solitude
- La plupart d’entre nous travaillent en équipes, dans des open spaces, pour des chefs qui valorisent au-dessus de tout l’intelligence collective. Les génies solitaires sont bannis. Seul vaut le collaboratif.
- Car les recherches montrent que les gens sont plus créatifs quand ils jouissent d’intimité et de tranquillité. Et, selon les travaux de deux psychologues, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Wikipédia) et Gregory Feist, les gens les plus spectaculairement créatifs, dans des champs très différents, sont souvent introvertis – juste assez extravertis pour échanger et avancer des idées,
- L’une des explications est que les introvertis sont à l’aise dans le travail solitaire, et que la solitude est un catalyseur de l’innovation
- En fait, les meilleurs d’entre eux sont des artistes. Et les artistes travaillent mieux tout seuls. Je vais vous donner un conseil : travaillez tout seul. Pas en groupe. Pas en équipe.”
- Pour Susan Cain, une certaine dose de travail d’équipe offre un moyen drôle, stimulant et utile pour échanger des idées, pour transmettre des informations et construire de la confiance. Mais, c’est une chose d’être associé à un groupe dans lequel chaque membre travaille de manière autonome sur sa propre pièce du puzzle, c’en est une autre d’être retenu dans des réunions sans fin et parqués dans des bureaux où rien n’isole des autres.
- L’étude a montré que les gens d’une même entreprise avaient sensiblement les mêmes performances, mais qu’il y avait d’énormes différences entre les entreprises. Et ce qui distinguait les développeurs de ces entreprises n’était pas l’expérience ou le salaire. C’était l’intimité sur le lieu de travail et la tranquillité.
- Beaucoup d’études montrent aussi que les sessions de brainstorming sont le pire moyen de stimuler la créativité. Et plus le groupe est élargi, moins les performances sont bonnes. Les raisons à cela : les gens ont tendance à laisser travailler les autres, ils s’imitent instinctivement les uns les autres et oublient leurs propres opinions.
- Mais il existe une exception à cela : le brainstorming électronique, où des groupes nombreux peuvent se montrer plus performants que des individus, et où plus le groupe est nombreux, meilleure est la performance. La protection que représente l’écran atténue les problèmes posés par le travail en groupe.
- C’est un lieu où l’on peut être seul ensemble – et c’est précisément ce qui lui donne toute sa force.
Lotusphere 2012 : la R&D de big blue marrie social et analytique

“Les laboratoires d’IBM planchent sur des outils d’analyse textuelle et décisionnelle destinés à hiérarchiser, au sein des communautés, les contenus les plus populaires, identifier les contributeurs les plus actifs ou cerner les questions les plus courues. “

tags: IBM socialnetworks analytics communityinsight gamification engagement
- La vocation d’un autre projet (Analytics-Driven Social Engagement on Social Media) est précisément d’identifier les questions laissées par les utilisateurs sur les blogs ou les wikis. Puis d’automatiser une réponse. « Toute la difficulté est d’identifier la personne qui a déjà répondu par le passé à la question, ou du moins à une question approchante », explique le responsable du projet, Jeffrey Nichols. Le système répond alors automatiquement à l’utilisateur et lui demande s’il souhaite partager la réponse apportée à sa ou ses communautés (l’opération se faisant en un clic).
- Enfin, dans la même optique de mutualisation de la connaissance, citons le projet Crowd Card. Sa vocation : lutter contre la déperdition des contenus et de leur savoir. Il génère un résumé des posts déposés sur les blogs (dont la lecture complète peut être fastidieuse). Puis, pour promouvoir ces contenus condensés, Crowd Card mise sur une système de « gamification » : celui qui recommandera pour la première fois un résumé repris ensuite en masse par les autres membres de la communauté sera crédité d’un maximum de points.
Le dirigeant de demain? Tout le contraire de celui d’aujourd’hui

tags: CxO vision longterm innovation examplarynature CEO
- Le chef d’entreprise loué aujourd’hui pour sa capacité à entretenir un réseau (54%), séducteur et bon orateur (41%), sans renier un certain côté dur pour atteindre ses objectifs (44%), est-il déjà has been ? Oui, à en croire l’étude, puisque dans les qualités attendues du dirigeant de demain, figurent désormais la capacité à savoir piloter et préserver l’intérêt de l’entreprise à long terme (61%), un aspect visionnaire (46%), et une capacité à créer l’innovation (33%) tout en préservant un comportement exemplaire, en interne comme en externe (42%). Bref, le dirigeant de demain serait le reflet inversé du dirigeant actuel…
Introducing The 43 Use Cases For Social Business (Social Enterprise) « A Software Insider’s Point of View

“As social media adoption continues to move from mainstream to pervasive ubiquity, enterprises will begin to benefit from these advancements in the consumerization of IT (CoIT). Just 18 months ago, early adopters identified 18 Use Cases for Social CRM (SCRM). These ground breaking use cases showed enterprises how to bring social into existing CRM processes.”

tags: socialbusiness socialcrm casestudies HCM adoption framework
- - Public relations/ marketing (PR/MA). Key impacted business process: Campaign to lead
  - Sales (SFA). Key impacted business process: Lead to deal
  - Service and support (CSS). Key impacted business process: Incident to resolution
  - Projects (PBS). Key impacted business process: Kickoff to delivery
  - Innovation/ product life cycle management (PLM). Key impacted business process: Concept to production
  - Supply chain (SCM). Key impacted business process: Sourcing to acceptance
  - Human capital management (HCM). Key impacted business process: Hire to retire
  - Finance. Key impacted business process: Invoice to payment
- Early Adopters Identify HCM And Projects As The Next Growth Area For Social Business
Opposer la démarche processus à l’entreprise 2.0 est un mauvais débat

“Nous entendons régulièrement des oracles prédire que désormais, grâce à la magie du 2.0, le monde de l’entreprise ne sera plus jamais comme avant.

Dans cette nouvelle ère, les structures hiérarchiques s’estompent. Les collaborateurs contribuent spontanément à l’innovation grâce aux réseaux sociaux inter-entreprises (les RSE) et grâce à une nouvelle dynamique coopérative. L’intelligence collective se structure spontanément pour traiter des situations de plus en plus complexes. Les ressources de l’entreprise sont spontanément utilisées à bon escient pour traiter des cas de plus en plus complexes et des situations de plus en plus individuelles, c’est l’ère du « Complex Event Management » et du « Case Management ». Dans ce monde, le client s’exprime naturellement et cette expression est représentative de la pensée de tous. Dans ce monde, le client contribue spontanément, directement ou au travers de l’analyse de ses réactions, à la définition des nouvelles offres de produits et de services.”

tags: enterprise2.0 socialbusiness process customerinsight socialnetworks
- L’écoute de ses clients sur Facebook, sur les forums, sur son propre site requiert la mise en place de dispositifs industriels pour s’assurer que les billets sont analysés, triés, et font l’objet d’un suivi quand cela est nécessaire (cela s’appelle un processus).
- Les RSE ne sont efficaces que si l’entreprise met en place un dispositif motivant les collaborateurs de l’entreprise à contribuer, à partager (par exemple, demander à chaque fin de mission à un collaborateur de publier les enseignements d’un projet, de partager les connaissances acquises), à réagir.
- Sans processus structuré, les dispositifs 2.0 sont non seulement inefficaces, mais en plus potentiellement dangereux
- Sans processus structuré, les dispositifs 2.0 sont non seulement inefficaces, mais en plus potentiellement dangereux.
- il faut penser les processus du 2.0 et ne pas croire en la génération spontané de la valeur
- Il n’y a pas d’un côté le monde des processus et de l’autre le monde du 2.0, qui au mieux cohabiteraient et au pire s’opposeraient. Il y a le monde de l’entreprise qui doit adapter ses processus et son pilotage pour tirer profit du potentiel du 2.0.
8 Crazy Things IBM Scientists Have Learned Studying Twitter

“A team of IBM researchers spends their days sifting through Twitter. They use live streams of tweets to develop machines that are smarter than the typical computer, an area of study known as “machine learning.”

Using these tweets, they’ve developed technology that allows a machine to understand that some tweets are just background noise and others are newsworthy and important.”

tags: ibm cognos customerinsight twitter sentiment sentimentanalysis
- IBM scientists have also come up with ways to measure “sentiment” … to identify which tweets are saying something good about something important and which are saying something negative.
- After two years of studying Twitter, their work wound up in an IBM social media monitoring product, Cognos Consumer Insight.
IBM : ce que @DelphineRB laisse en héritage

”
« La philosophie d’IBM, c’est que les 460 000 IBMers dans le monde représentent l’entreprise et la marque. L’ecosystème a changé, le brand appartient aux clients et aux employés et on accepte de perdre le contrôle » “

tags: casestudies IBM brand socialmedia guidelines communication measurement
- our canaliser le message, des « social media guidelines » ont été définies dès 2005 et réactualisées en 2010. Construites de façon collaborative, à travers des « jams » (brainstormings virtuels), ces guidelines servent aujourd’hui de modèles pour d’autres sociétés, comme SAP ou France Télévisions.
- our canaliser le message, des « social media guidelines » ont été définies dès 2005 et réactualisées en 2010. Construites de façon collaborative, à travers des « jams » (brainstormings virtuels), ces guidelines servent aujourd’hui de modèles pour d’autres sociétés, comme SAP ou France Télévisions.
- Pour canaliser le message, des « social media guidelines » ont été définies dès 2005 et réactualisées en 2010. Construites de façon collaborative, à travers des « jams » (brainstormings virtuels), ces guidelines servent aujourd’hui de modèles pour d’autres sociétés, comme SAP ou France Télévisions
- Pour canaliser le message, des « social media guidelines » ont été définies dès 2005 et réactualisées en 2010. Construites de façon collaborative, à travers des « jams » (brainstormings virtuels), ces guidelines servent aujourd’hui de modèles pour d’autres sociétés, comme SAP ou France Télévisions.
- Pour canaliser le message, des « social media guidelines » ont été définies dès 2005 et réactualisées en 2010. Construites de façon collaborative, à travers des « jams » (brainstormings virtuels), ces guidelines servent aujourd’hui de modèles pour d’autres sociétés, comme SAP ou France Télévisions.
- En interne, une suite de réseaux sociaux reprennent les principaux outils grand public. « Nous avons développé chez IBM un Twitterlike, un Facebooklike, des wikis… internes. Ces réseaux sociaux ont un rôle pédagogique et préparent à la prise de parole en externe. »
- Sur le Facebook interne, par exemple, le message du groupe est présenté au second plan, on met davantage en avant ce qui est produit par les employés ». 1200 ambassadeurs (les « Blue IQ ») sont chargés d’évangéliser en interne pour développer ces nouveaux usages.
- Sur le site corporate, la rubrique « Ask the experts » met en avant des IBMers locaux, avec leurs photos et les liens vers leurs profils Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter ou blogs, au choix. « Le message de la marque c’est ‘bienvenue dans notre salon, mais allez aussi dans la cuisine, la conversation n’est pas seulement chez nous, elle est partout »
- des téléopérateurs ont été formés aux réseaux sociaux. Au lieu de consacrer 8h au téléphone, ils en consacrent plus que 4h et passent le temps restant à intervenir sur les blogs, les forums ou Twitter
- ersonne ne veut networker avec une marque, c’est avec des gens que l’on communique. La marque ne raconte plus une histoire, mais fait en sorte que l’histoire soit racontée pour elle ».
- Toutes les conversations autour de la marque sont mesurées et évaluées, quantitativement et qualitativement par un « social media listening center » de 150 personnes en Inde.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Information leaks on social networks : that’s not the problem

Bertrand DUPERRIN — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 15:00:54 +0000

Summary : businesses see social networks as possible channels for information leaks caused by negligence. What is right. But their retort, that is mainly technological, does not solve anything because social networks are only one of the many channels that can make risks become true, not the cause of the risk. As a matter of fact the largest social network in the world is the street. If a global approach through awareness and accountability will help to deal with the whole risk, solutions that are being currently implemented are only window-dressing regarding to the many channels information can use to leak. Human issues can’t be solved by technology only and firewalls will never replace trust.

It’s obvious that information leaks is a sensitive point for businesses and the risk of employees being negligent on social networks has to be taken seriously. Hence the need for limiting this risk. Most of time the response relies on technology. That solves a part of the problem but is far from being enough.

As a matter of fact, prohibiting any connection to these sites or filtering outgoing information may limit the risk. But such an approach has weaknesses. It only works on corporate devices. At the moment people use their mobile or connect from home the risk is here gain. Making employees aware of the risks caused by their own behaviors is more useful because, in some ways, tools are only the vehicle behaviors use to make information flow. Adopting this approach helps dealing with some of the consequences but none of the causes.

The largest social network is not Facebook or Twitter but…the world, life, the street. And no technology will prevent anyone to do anything there except accountability. The good side of this approach is that, when it’s successful, it works with any device, anytime, anywhere.

We all have examples to tell. This group of coworkers of Bank xxxxxx having a drink and talking about their employer’s solvency, not being conscious everyone was listening to them. These two executives discussing their secret new corporate strategy at lunch. Everyone around appreciated. This group of employees of YYYYY vacationing together and discussing, around the pool, of lay-off program they were secretly working on. The problem that, even if they were on the middle of the Indian Ocean there were lots of french people in the hotel. One more thing. I would like to thank the sales rep of ZZZZ that were discussing their plan to sign with a customer in the plane….since I was meeting the same client a couple of years later my colleagues and I make the best possible use of it. I also think about all the people that can’t prevent from working in trains or planes, making it easy for anyone to see what’s on their beautiful HD screen.

Of course such things never happen. I’m even sure that in the above mentioned companies, social networks are filtered or blocked. Human issues won’t be solved by technology and firewalls will never replace trust.

No matter your organization is an elephant : it can dance too !

Bertrand DUPERRIN — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 14:00:34 +0000

Summary : What makes a social business project successful ? To what extent question the existing and transform the culture ? Is success possible when top managers are not much concerned ? If we observe three major cases, there’ something obvious : the project was tied to an organizational change wanted by deeply involved CEOs. They become social business projects afterwards because they eventually used some new tools to support a years old approach. The example of IBM in the 90s shows that there are little limits to what’s possible and that arguments that “our culture doesn’t make it possible”, “that won’t work here” or “we’re too big to change” are not relevant.

Whatever the way we consider the problem, there is no example of an enterprise dramatically changing the way it operates without a strong leader deeply attached to a vision of business. Nothing new there since this has been proven right for decades even before words like enterprise 2.0 or social business became trendy.

Successful projects have a couple of things in common : a visionary CEO who is deeply involved, a goal at is not about social business and the courage to challenge the corporate culture. And those who fail ? Top executives that are not concerned and not very involved, projects aiming at implementing a social network and a moto looking like “don’t be rough with people, we’re not ready for that”.

Let’s have a look at a couple of cases.

Alcatel-Lucent. Whoever knew this enterprise 5 or 6 years ago should have been surprised when their project came under the highlights. If there were a place where such a thing could not have worked this should have been Alcatel-Lucent. Yes but…one day came Ben Verwayyen. We all know the story. First an email adress so employees could directly interact with him. Then an internal blog. Then, as his own approach was beginning to influence people in the organization, the need for a social network. All of this because his vision of business is made of words like transparency, accountability and that’s the way that he things a business should be run.

Danone. When a CEO (Antoine Riboud) states, in the early 80s, that “The most successful companies are those that think jointly technological change, work design and the changes in internal social relationships.” much is said. The rest is about sustaining a strong corporate culture. In th 2000s they started a program called “Networking attitude” to favor interactions, ideas exchange and problem solving. A program that was only about behaviors, management and the human side of the organization at a moment when web 2.0 and social networks did not exist. Technology will come years after and won’t be a break but a way to reinforce the corporate project.

Then IBM. Looking at the success of IBM, not as a vendor selling social business solutions but as a social business itself, is very instructive. But a large part of the lesson is missed if we don’t step back in time to learn from the Louis Gerstner era (1993-2002). I just reread the book he wrote about the time he spent at IBM (he also worked for American Express and Nabisco before), Who said elephants can’t dance. This book is very instructive for the very reason that, at this time, internet was not what it is today…and concepts like social networks or “anything 2.0″ where not even a dream. But, in some ways, Gerstner perfectly set the cornerstones that made social business possible ten years later.

This is a very important lesson for all those who think that “it’s not possible in our company”, “we’re too big to change” or “we don’t have to change…we’re the biggest, we’re the best”.

Let’s start with a couple of words about the context, when Gerstner was appointed to save IBM. The 400.000 employees company, after having been a forerunner and dominated the technlogy industry for decades (it was founded in 1911), was dying. For analysts the question was not to know what IBM was going to do but when it was going to die. A couple of weeks ? A year ? Not more.

At this time IBM was pilling up all dysfunctions we can see in large businesses today. A gigantic organization without responsiveness. An organization able to make major innovations but unable to bring new products to the market. An overgrown bureaucracy (the number of assistants and people reporting to assistants was impressive, as well as the number of people dedicated to support…tens of thousands in europe for example).

Hundreds, if not thousands, of IBM middle- and senior-level executives had assistants assigned to them, drawn from the ranks of the best and brightest of the up-and-coming managers. The tasks were varied, but from what I could understand, AAs had primarily administrative duties and even, at times, secretarial chores. For the most part, AAs organized things, took notes, watched, and, hopefully, learned.

Inability to roll out a global strategy : since respect for people was a core corporate value, people had the right to refuse to do something they did not found relevant. This even became an official process, the “non-concur process” that organized the way for employees not comply with decision that were made ! The organization was so self-confident that it was focused on itself, on its internal stuff, forgetting its customers and making their interactions with IBM look like hell. To end, an organization made of fiefdoms, with their own agendas, sometimes competing with each other and even against the corporate strategy. To some extent that, when Gerstner stepped in, the only possible was to split IBM into smaller units…and sell them.

Of course, Gerstner made a lot of courageous and clever decisions in terms of strategy, going agains many things that were decided by the previous leadership team. But he could not have been successful without a deep change in the way people worked. Without deep cultural changes, IBM would not have been able to execute his strategy (or even any strategy by the way..)

So Gerstner came with a couple of principles, clearly stated, that were the contrary of how IBM was doing things at this time :

a) I manage by principle, not procedure.
b) The marketplace dictates everything we should do.
c) I’m a big believer in quality, strong competitive strategies and plans, teamwork, payoff for performance, and ethical responsibility.
d) I look for people who work to solve problems and help colleagues. I sack politicians.
e) I am heavily involved in strategy; the rest is yours to implement. Just keep me informed in an informal way. Don’t hide bad information – I hate surprises. Don’t try to blow things by me. Solve problems laterally; don’t keep bringing them up the line.
f) Move fast. If we make mistakes, let them be because we are too fast rather than too slow.
g) Hierarchy means very little to me. Let’s put together in meetings the people who can help solve a problem, regardless of position. Reduce committees and meetings to a minimum. No committee decision making. Let’s have lots of candid, straightforward communications.
h) I don’t completely understand the technology. I’ll need to learn it, but don’t expect me to master it. The unit leaders must be the translators into business terms for me.

A large part of the book is about business decisions, sometimes contrary to what “normalcy” would have suggested, but most of it is about how he made things work, how he put his principles at work. A whole part is dedicated to corporate culture, a sacred cow no one dares challenging…what he did because it was leading the enteprise to the grave. Same for HR with a dramatic change in the compensation and benefits system, rewards, career management etc…

The book also reveals some crunchy details. For example :

• Gerstner decided to keep employees informed of what was going on as often as possible. Some answers to his messages, positive or even very negative, are quoted in the book. He used email to do so, what was a disruptive way to inform employees in 1992. Some managers did not want things to change. What did they do ? They blocked email coming from the CEO so employees will not receive them…

• About his notes taken during his first meetings with top managers

What’s striking from my notes is the absence of any mention of culture, teamwork, customers, or leadership—the elements that turned out to be the toughest challenges at IBM.

In the end, we can understand how IBM eventually became a global and coherent organization, that turns its internal wealth (people, knowledge) a shared asset and not a burden like it was before. For those who are scared of loosing control, here’s what he said :

Let’s decentralize decision making wherever possible, but this is not always the right approach; we must balance decentralized decision making with central strategy and common customer focus.

If IBM has become what we know today, we need other explanation that the tools they use (and sell). We have to get back to Gerstner to understand how things become possible. That’s also why, years before customers show interest for such products, they built their own enterprise social network : because it was a way to sustain their organization, to enable the way work supposed to be done at IBM.

So let’s come back to the original topic of this post. At a time when enterprises are questioning their social business approach, the benefits, this examples are more than meaningful. Leaders started with a vision of business, embodied by a deeply involved CEO and eventually ended by implementing tools (there are also examples of businesses being successful without technology…we’ll talk about it in future post). It took time, years, to move from the organizational stuff to using technology.

Gerstner shows us that nothing is impossible, that arguments relying on history, size, culture are irrelevant when one has the courage to make things happen. I only hope that today’s leaders won’t wait until they are in the same situation as IBM as (change or die) to find this courage.

Now…last not but least. What would Alcatel-Lucent look like today without Verwayyen, Danone without Riboud, IBM without Gerster. At least one would have disappeared and the other would be very different…

If it matters measure it. If it’s new build a new frame of reference.

Bertrand DUPERRIN — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 14:00:08 +0000

Summary : When the world and the economy are transforming, the existing frames of references on which be base our thinking and decision making become obsolete. To adapat to their current and future context, organizations not only should have the vision of what they want to become but also implement it in their employees’ day do day work. Not superposing two opposite models in order to let change happen without daring changing the existing but replacing the one with the other. It only makes sense when employees are provided with tools and indicators that favor and reward actions that are aligned with the new model and not with the old one anymore. It also helps to measure the impact of change and measure how far they’ve been. That seldom happens in enterprise 2.0 projects because of a lack of reflexion on new frames of references. Fortunately, examples coming from other fields shows that when one really want to do things well and deep, change is possible and measurable.

A couple of weeks ago I was invited by Danone to talk about their social responsibility program, what made me learn a lot, believe it nor not, in terms of organizational transformation and had many things in common with enterprises 2.0 approaches. How possible is that ? Read what’s coming in the following lines.

Like many enterprises, Danone has understood that the environmental question will be key in its business. It’s already a cultural fact that is not new at all (remember that Antoine Riboud, Danone’s former CEO, used to say that the responsibility of the enterprise did not end at the facilities’ doors…30 years ago) and new an economic fact. There are many chances that, in a near future, carbon will be monetized, so managing it efficiently leads to a competitive advantage.

How did danone do ? First by stating it in its corporate values and project, long before it becomes a trendy topic. Anyone who has a few contacts with Danone knows that concepts such as double project ou triple bottom line are known by everyone and are a share concern. Such an approach need to be embodied and the discourse has to be turned into action. So Danone established a “Nature VP” so the environmental concern has currency at the very top of the organization. But, since Danone is a business and that there is an economic reality behind all that, that people need to change the way they understand and feel what added value means in such a context, they even established a Nature CFO. The logic is obvious : we’re entering a world when things that used to be secondary are becomming essential. So they need to be integrated into the value calculation system so what was a cost in the previous vision becomes an investment and an opportunity in 2012.

So they invented “green Capex”, some very concretes things to implement to translate this vision and awareness into business. Looking for ROI on a 3 or 5 years scale to take time to learn and not give up too early. But there were no relevant indicators to do that. So they could have come to the conclusion that it was not measurable, what could have lead to the consequence we all know : the project would have become a dead body because no one would have been able to see its impact or one’s personal contribution through one’s decisions, not even the interest of changing one’s thinking and decision making model.

So Danone worked on designing new models allowing to measure the impact of their business in terms of carbon and its short and long term financial consequences. They experimented it on the field, tried to make the most of new data, made an empirical job then tried to model. The organization tried to measure what matters, since it matters. That’s as simple as that.

It also helped to make something else possible : reducing the carbon footprint is now a part of executive’s evaluation and reward system. So everyone, at his own level, in his business unit, in his field is concerned.

But they still were trying to make sense of it for more and more employees. It means that anyone should understand his own role, impact, contribution to the project. It also means that, when facing two possible choices, one making sense in the old paradigm and the other making sense in the new one, they people should make the right one without fearing to put their performance at risk and sacrifice their bonuses.

So Danone co-innovated with SAP to integrate this new model in their business tools, in their production management system. It was all about putting the new model at work in employees’ day to day lives, in the flow of work and avoid schizophrenia. No contradiction here anymore : there’s a single model, a single vision and not an ideal one set on the top of an old operation model that has nothing in common. All indicators, measurement tools, tools supporting processes takes it into account. SAP brought the technology and Danone its knowledge and IP.

Anything in common with enterprise 2.0 projects ?

We can see that the key success factors are quite the same

• Something deeply rooted in the corporate values.

• A project aiming at changing the model and not making two opposite models coexist.

• High level sponsors that won’t run away when change will become too impacting.

• Implementing the new model in the heart of production flows

• If a relevant frame of reference that brings sense, coherence and alignment does not exist, do what’s needed to build a new one.

• Be fully aligned : people work as they’re measured

• Don’t think about technology before it’s needed and limit its role to what’s essential. As Danone’s IT people said “IT should understand how the vision of the business will impact our systems in the next years”.

But are organizations making such efforts for the projects we’re talking about ? No. Obviously because such projects are not seen as transformation ones or corporate level ones. The top of the organization is sometimes informed, sometimes it initiated things, but is seldom deeply involved. Such projects seldom pay attention to production flows either, nothing is done to change the way decisions, arbitrations are make and adding communities to the existing organization is often seen as good enough. And, most of all, nothing is done to improve frames of references, value measurement, defining what’s a cost and what’s an investment in a world that has nothing in common with the one the current frames were designed for, thinking of externalities, long term impact. Of course it needs to break some old assumptions dow, challenge what we used to think was right.

Would danone have been so successful if they have started with their ERP program ? No. Would internal and external communities have been enough, stating that “producing a lot of carbon + green communities too offset = change”. Not at all (in fact these communities exist but were not “created”, they exist because of the corporate DNA and Danone only offered them a digital place to meet). What if each unit has started to invent its own management system, frame, ERP without any coherence at the scale of the organization ? Failure. And if the “carbon objective” have not been included in the way execs are measured and rewarded ? Failure. And if the IT was thinking about tools instead of trying to understand how to adapt their offer to the corporate vision of business ? Failure.

Should I add more…or is it clear enough ?

The truth is that the “care bear approach” to transformation projects is still too heavy. Change without changing. Step back when people may be too annoyed. No economic sense is made of the project. The focus is on willingness and passion without paying any attention to the need for rationality. The structure of the organization is kept untouched. Behaviors have to change but evaluation systems still promote the behaviors that should disappear. No impact on operations because nothing is done to improve the production system…even when it happens by luck, nothing is done to measure what really happens. In short, everything is done by halves and everyone is surprise that the promise is not delivered.

After all, “like father, like son”. Danone is already very advanced in Social Business (both “social business” : the “2.0″ one and the social and environmental one), without any surprise. They started from the corporate project and values, worked on the human side, on HR, behaviors and management for a couple of years before starting to do anything with software. “Networking Attitude” is one of their management cornerstone, a training and change program, a value that’s assessed when people are hired. It’s one of the only company where I saw the software coming years before the project, where HR took the lead and told IT what was essential in terms of adoption, sense, integration in the workspace…so the IT could deliver more than a tool : a valuable service.

Two more points other companies should learn from :

- in this co-innovation project with SAP, Danone invested its IP, a unique asset that’s the result of years of work on the impact of C02 on their value chain. That did not make any problem to them : what matters is to go fast, create a competitive advantage and stat ahead. No sharing this IP with SAP would have caused delays, even failure. And if other organizations ask SAP for a similar system it’s OK…Danone will stay ahead because they moved first. As Danone’s speaker said “what matters is not the copyright but the speed, the ability to influence and change practices”.

- at the beginning, according to the well known “aim the moon, even if you miss it you’ll find a star” adage, Danone stared with foolish objectives. In 2008 they wanted to reduce their carbon footprint by 30%. It was a very high objective so people understood they had to be ambitious, try new ideas, make the most of any opportunity and not content themselves with “good enough”. Result : as 2012 is beginning the 30% are about to be reached !

Lot of work ahead…

Don’t tell my mum I’m a community manager, she believes I play piano in a brothel

Bertrand DUPERRIN — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 19:00:06 +0000

Summary : There’s a tendency to call “community manager” any person that communicates online for an enterprise…even it the activity has nothing to do with communities. This excessive use of a buzzword seems to start worrying applicants that want more precisions on the nature of the work and how it articulates with “real” operations. A search for sense and perennial positioning that also comes with the fear of seeing this title being a millstone around their neck, now and in the future

NB : the title of this post is inspired by a book written by the advertising leader Jacques Seguela at the time the advertizing industry was in its early days and did not look very credible. The title was ‘Don’t tell my mother I’m in advertising, she believes I play piano in a brothel”

In the last months I saw some contacts asking me things about the same concern. Enough for me to think that there must be something really important around. Each time the question was quite similar : “I’m about to get a new job, I’m close to the end of the recruitment process and we’re discussing the job description. I don’t know why but I’m very uncomfortable with this community manager thing. What do you think ?”.

The first idea that came to my mind is that they were lucky enough to be discussing with enterprises that were open minded enough to refine the job description and even the job title with the people on the short list regarding to their understanding of the challenges and opportunities. And that’s already a good point.

Now let’s focus on the core issue. It seems that more and more people fear that once the trend will be over, they’ll suffer from the buzzword nature of the community manager job. What makes them be very cautious about what the work is really about and wonder if having such an job mentioned in their CV will have a negative impact once fashion will be over.

The problem with community management is that it’s a position being held by people with very different profiles, from interns to experienced 40/50 years old people. Surprising ? Not at all because the title apply to many possibilities in terms of job description and experience. From the “young guy talking in the micro” to the experienced manager leading a global strategy. If I had a look at what real experts say, we can learn from the Community Roundtable that, in fact we have :

Community specialists
Community managers
Community strategists

Let me add one more specie : customer service professionals who are being called community managers by anyone for the only reason they now operate online. I recently talked with one of them who told be with a bit of irritation. “I’m not a communication person and will never be. I’ve been put a ‘community manager’ sticker on at the time I began to use online tools. But if I’m a CM, the guy answering on the phone or the one solving clients’ problems in our shops is a CM too ! What I see is a dangerous shift toward a job that’s not mine, with goals that may be contradictory to mine. Maybe we have an online community…but what I see is thousands of individual cases to be solved”.

This diversity is poorly understood by enterprises that often think that’s all about the same thing. Not surprising that experienced people now start to make things clearer when they’re being offered such a job.

The people I was talking with were having, in my opinion, a very relevant questioning. In addition to the job (managing what ? A community ? A community strategy) they were also raising questions about the scope and goal.

- scope : will my job be an online only one or will I have to operate offline. If it’s about mobilizing an ecosystem of stakeholder, the online part should be a part of a global program aiming at doing much more than creating and managing communities.

- that leads us to the goal. Communities…but what for ? Communities or stakeholders ? What do we want to do with them ? For what shared value ?

What lead these person to conclude : “in fact I should position my job in a ecosystem, stakeholders and value approach. There are many kind of stakeholders to mobilize, in different ways, for different purposes. Online activities are only a part of the job and some actions will be 100% offline, others 100% online, some will be a mix depending on the target and the need. It the job is confined to online communities we will miss a huge part of the challenge and spend a lot of energy on it without even knowing why. I need to be vigilant on the job description and title. It will even be better than a buzzword title that means both everything and nothing and won’t help my partners and colleagues to understand my mission. It will make me more credible”.

Interesting thoughts on the very nature of professional community managers and their role in a logic that goes beyond fashion.

Links for this week (weekly)

Diigo — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:30:22 +0000

A world without bosses

“Can your organization work without bosses? In the documentary, Ban the Boss (one hour BBC video) Paul Thomas shows that most organizations can run just fine without bosses, or at least without traditional, hierarchical bosses who tell workers what to do.”

tags: management boss leadership semco tyranny hierarchy decisionmaking communication
- Tyranny was the solution to what was essentially a communications problem.
- Many bosses don’t have a clue what is actually happening at the front-end, as is clear in the BBC documentary, and as I wrote in network walking.
- documentary that shows just how difficult it can be to change attitudes and beliefs about work. In this case, the obvious place to start a boss-purge was at the vehicle service bay, with nine skilled mechanics “supported by” eight managers.
- Listen to Ricardo Semler explain how Semco organizes work and “staff determine when they need a leader, and then choose their own bosses in a process akin to courtship”.
Gouvernance de l’information et entreprise 2.0 : perspectives 2012

“La gouvernance de l’information, c’est un peu comme l’entreprise 2.0 (et ce n’est pas un hasard) : on en parle beaucoup, mais on la “réalise” peut être un peu moins !

La gouvernance de l’information est un élément indispensable à la construction de l’entreprise de demain car elle est déterminante pour la CONFIANCE.

Pour beaucoup, la gouvernance a été jusqu’alors une stratégie de défense, de protection et les mises en oeuvre de solutions ont été principalement faites pour répondre à des litiges !
C’est peu dire que la gouvernance n’est pas encore directement “intégrée” dans notre quotidien !”

tags: governance informationgovernance decisionmaking enterprise2.0 socialbusiness roles accountability responsibility quantification risk riskmanagement
- la gouvernance de l’information doit être réfléchie principalement en tant que soutien aux affaires et non pas seulement comme une stratégie de défense décidée par les “risk managers” et les directions juridiques.
IBM Focuses HR on Change

“It’s rare to find a corporate human resources function that accelerates change by actively finding ways to help drive new strategies. Most HR groups sit back and wait for requests from the business for administrative people transactions. In their role of stewards of policy compliance, they can tend to be a brake on change.

But not at IBM. Its HR function has been instrumental in the $100 billion company’s metamorphosis from a floundering computer manufacturer in the 1990s to a prosperous software and consulting services company today. HR has helped the organization absorb more than 125 acquisitions since 2000, and integrate globally, saving $6 billion since 2005.”

tags: IBM hr change casestudies skills teamwork culture training leadership mentoring enablement analytics brand hrbranding
- “We observed that 80% of leadership development is based on work experience. We looked to see what we could do to create a work-related development opportunity.
- we took the top people in mature markets and assigned them to help and mentor people in the growth markets. Growth market leaders learn from major markets, and equally important, vice versa.”
- Over the past decade we moved from a multinational organization to a globally integrated enterprise with global standard processes. For example, I have taken 8,000 HR software applications (largely focused on the HR needs of individual IBM country units) down to under 1,000.
- We’re starting to expand ‘diversity’ to also mean ‘inclusion’ — helping people work together.”
- Instead of grabbing available resources and authority, they waited for the boss to tell them what do; they delegated up
- The core of a performance-based culture is more use of analytics. We needed to start in HR by becoming more analytical, using data, defining cause-and-effect relationships, and tying HR activities to business results.”
- “We link our external branding to our internal brand,
- IBM encourages employees to use social media — a far cry from the day when no one could communicate externally without prior approval
- IBM is also different because it hires and develops people for the long term at all levels — not just for today’s job openings and not just senior management.
Do People Really Want You to Be Honest

“One of my clients, a large financial services firm, wanted to understand what differentiated successful new managers from unsuccessful ones. So they surveyed the direct reports of new managers with MBA degrees. The number one behavior that distinguished the best managers? Asking for help from their employees.”

tags: management trust honesty
101 Examples of Social Business ROI

“Now that initiatives have been in market, any reasonable business manager would expect to see program results. However, quantified results in social business and brands willing to stand behind them are difficult to find. But the truth is out there…and here are 101 examples of social business return on investment, roughly 60% revenue generation and 40% cost reduction. Each example lists brand, activity, and source + year.”

tags: socialbusiness ROI brands costreduction communities casestudies
Workplace Performance Services: more than just Training

” Since the latter half of the 20th century, we have gone through a period where training departments have been directed to control organizational learning. It was part of the Taylorist, industrial model that also compartmentalized work and ensured that only managers were allowed to make decisions. In this context, only training professionals were allowed to talk about learning.”

But to be fair, it is not just Training Departments that think like this, there are still many people in other parts of the business that believe that “learning” has to be “organised” or “packaged up” (in the form of “training”) to be seen as a valid solution to a problem.”

tags: training performance humanresources informallearning learning
- So the issue seems to be twofold:
  
  (1) that LEARNING (in whatever form) is seen as something that has to be designed and managed, to order to be valid, and
  
  (2) that the Learning & Development department’s purpose is only seen as the provider of these “organised learning solutions” (ie training), where success is measured in terms of test scores and course completions.
- The modern workplace is a complex adaptive system. There is no single approach that can be used all the time.”
- , it is not about using traditional “command and control” approaches (that are employed in most training solutions to try and force people to learn), but it is much more about encouraging people to engage in these new activities to support one another as they (learn) to do their jobs – in many cases helping them to “connect and collaborate”
- Obviously, some L&D departments (and workplace learning professionals) will want to remain focused on providing Training Services for their organisations and be quite happy for other business functions to provide performance support services to help their people work smarter. Other L&D departments have already expanded their services to fulfil all these activities, and more are beginning to do so too.
“Produire Français”, un marronnier électoral à abattre d’urgence

” Aujourd’hui, un de ces “marronniers” de la vie politique est la “relocalisation” de l’industrie française, source de mesures supposées la favoriser, au premier rang desquelles la fameuse TVA sociale éreintée ici même il y a peu. Mais certains candidats imaginent un retour à un protectionnisme bien plus contraignant, qu’il soit européen, voire, pire encore, national. Dans la période économique difficile que nous connaissons, de telles politiques protectionnistes, qu’elles soient revendiquées ou masquées, seraient absolument suicidaires. Voyons pourquoi. “

tags: economy service serviceinnovation value relocation addedvalue
- la capacité d’un produit à se faire connaître, à séduire, à s’adapter au plus près des besoins du consommateur, à lui être livré, avec un service après vente et des prestations annexes de qualité, comptent autant que la fabrication du produit lui même, voire, de plus en plus souvent, beaucoup plus.
- En termes de comptabilité nationale, nous avons donc bien importé un iPhone « made in China » pour une valeur de $178,96 mais ce que cet exemple démontre, c’est que ce qui est effectivement « made in China », ce sont les $6,5 d’assemblage – soit 3,6% du prix d’importation.
- la part de la production dans la VA chute régulièrement. Il ne suffit pas de fabriquer un objet pour le vendre : les fonctions “différenciantes”, la conception et le marketing, ont une valeur souvent bien plus importante de nos jours.
- Et plutôt que de vouloir utiliser la force législative ou fiscale pour maintenir en France des emplois de production de gamme basse, dont la valeur ajoutée ne justifie plus le maintient dans un pays à forte masse salariale, mieux vaut utiliser une part de la valeur ajoutée dégagée par la délocalisation pour financer la reconversion professionnelle des personnes qui doivent changer de métier.
- L’enjeu, pour l’Europe, n’est pas de se protéger de la perte des emplois industriels du passé, mais de rester une place dans laquelle il est possible et attractif de créer ces emplois à haut potentiel, éventuellement “néo-industriels”
building the conversation economy

”

John Battelle, the founder and executive chairman of Federated Media Publishing, explains in this interview what it means to understand content not as a constellation of sites, but as a system of conversations – and looks at the implications for marketers. “

tags: economy conversation conversationeconomy engagement marketing socialmedia metrics kpi
- There’s a yin and the yang of the Internet – a circulatory effect between Facebook or Twitter or Google, and the Independent Web, which has generally meant blogs or semi-professional sites.
- At this point, marketers have pivoted: they’re not just putting their marketing next to content, but actually creating content themselves – or underwriting the creation of content. And then they encourage the sharing of that content and creating ecosystems where that content circulates. T
- Increasingly, they’re realizing that this social media space involves an ongoing conversation. Assets never really go away. They may rotate off the front page or be moved to a different section or classified for later search, but they don’t disappear.
- You can see these attempts to create integrated communities between offline, online, television, print and Internet. Doing that requires a different skill set than previous, more siloed approaches to media.
- . But the clickthru rate is still a bad metric in terms of what a brand might want to optimize for, be it awareness, purchase intent, brand perception, and so on.
- The next step is to aggregate it across all of our inventory, put it in an index, and be able to say which kind of inventory indices higher for particular social media activities, or particular types of conversations or content. Or, you could cross-hatch this information on social actions with audience data: these kinds of people like to talk about those kinds of topics, and they like to share about these kinds of topics. It’s an evolving and currently inexact science, but a very promising one.
- once you’re engaged in an ongoing conversation with your customer, you’re just crazy if you’re not using these insights and learnings to develop better products and to answer market needs.
- Marketers have been traditionally trained to think, “My company made this, now we’ll go sell it.” But the ones who pivot to selling by being engaged with customers 24/7 become product researchers as well as the face of the company.
- A lot of companies are saying, “If we’re going to do social, then we’re going to build in Facebook.” They think they can just check the box and cover the majority of their social program by investing in a really good Facebook page.
- . But if you’re going to be a brand with a publishing approach to marketing, you must have an independent taproot that isn’t controlled by anyone but you. Then put out your branches and feelers everywhere. Integrate that experience and let your content and messaging flow through it.
The Old Solutions Have Become the New Problems – BusinessWeek

“A former Harvard Business School professor says companies must commit to ‘I-space’ and collaboration, not financialization and administration “

tags: collaboration financialization administration capitalism trust growth costcutting
- we managed to produce a generation of managers and business professionals that is deeply mistrusted and despised by a majority of people in our society and around the world.
- Some 77% of Americans say they refuse to buy products or services from a company they distrust,
- Many companies reacted to this decline by finding new ways to cut costs.
- Under the flag of “shareholder value,” (a concept honed by HBS faculty and glorified in many of our courses), firms also turned to “financialization,” another specialty of the curriculum. Since the 1980s, goods-producing firms have made more of their revenue and profits from finance than from selling their products.
- Historians observe that financialization is a typical indicator of economic decline
- As Harvard—along with many other business schools—now tries to understand what went wrong, it’s essential that everyone involved in business learns how to be the future. There are turning points in history when it’s time to salvage what is valuable from the old and put our energies into constructing a new model based on new rules
Digital Workplace Trends 2012

tags: intranet intranet2.0 digitalworkplace collaboration structuredcollaboration socialcollaboration mobility
Gen Y Traits in the Workplace Unveiled

“A new study released today takes a closer look at this generation and its employment trends—with statistics culled from the social network that defines Gen Y: Facebook.

Millennial Branding together with Identified.com, studied 4 million Gen Y Facebook profiles to obtain better insight into how members of this generation operate professionally—a topic of increasing importance as they are projected to make up 75 percent of the workforce by 2025. “

tags: humanresources generationy hiring retention intrapreneurship culture
- only 7 percent of Gen Y reports working for a Fortune 500 company—a statistic in line with another report that predicts that 40 percent of the Fortune 500 will no longer exist 10 years from now.
- Fortune 500 companies are having a tough time hiring and retaining Gen Y workers right now,”
- Gen Y looks for more flexibility like working from home, and they want to have access to social networks. Fortune 500 companies don’t usually allow this flexibility. I think we’re looking at the end of the 9-to-5
- Gen Y typically spends just two years at their first job and has job-hopped multiple times in their careers.
- Companies need to allow Gen-Yers to operate entrepreneurially within the corporation by giving them control over their time, activities and budgets as much as possible

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.