Articles by Category: Enterprise 2.0

Sage advice on wiki adoption: keys to success

Stewart Mader has written about keys to wiki adoption. To quote:

Meetings are an especially good place to start. Plan agendas using a wiki, then record minutes & notes, and action items. Between meetings, you can update the status of items, and this sets the stage for deeper wiki uses, like project management.

[Thanks to Michael Angeles]

Posted by jamesr at 02:29 PM | Permalink
Categories: Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0

Enterprise social tools: components for success

Thomas Vander Wal has written about achieving success with enterprise social tools. To quote:

Social tools require much more than just the tools for their implementation to be successful. Tool selection is tough as no tool is doing everything well and they all are focussing on niche areas. But, as difficult as the tool selection can be, there are three more elements that make up what the a successful deployment of the tools and can be considered part of the tools.

Posted by jamesr at 05:22 PM | Permalink
Categories: Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, Knowledge management

What do innovative intranets look like? [+ audio]

| View

For those who missed my talk at the recent IA Summit in Miami, here's my full presentation (including audio).

In it, I walk through a number of the winners from the inaugural Intranet Innovation Awards, as well as answering questions on what they've done. Pointers are also given on where to focus innovation efforts, and how to deliver a more valuable intranet.

(Don't forget that entries for this year's Intranet Innovation Awards are now open, with a closing date of 16 May 2008. This talk should give you some good ideas about what to submit, and you should also read through the How to win an Intranet Innovation Award presentation on Slideshare.)

Posted by jamesr at 08:13 AM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations, Enterprise 2.0, Intranets

Actual benefits from enterprise 2.0

Andrew McAfee writes of an example of benefits from enterprise 2.0, as provided by one of his business students. To quote:

The comment had come from a low-level marketing manager located in a satellite office. In his remarks submitted to the CEO’s blog, the marketing manager openly questioned Chemco’s sacred cow - its ability to wring costs out of a process and to successfully operate an ultra-lean efficient organization. Specifically, he questioned the importance of one of the company’s favorite metrics (something they are extremely proud of); I’ll call it Metric A.

(This is also a great example of the power of simple storytelling, much more engaging and powerful than numbers.)

Posted by jamesr at 11:37 AM | Permalink
Categories: Enterprise 2.0

Questions to ask before replacing corporate email

Dennis McDonald has written an article on replacing corporate email. To quote:

Email is not necessarily a good collaboration tool. This document discusses some of the questions you can ask about your organization’s current use of email and how improvements can be made. Also discussed is email’s impact on the adoption of new tools more suited to supporting workgroups and collaboration such as blogs, wikis, and groupsites for sharing information about people and projects.

Posted by jamesr at 11:27 AM | Permalink
Categories: Enterprise 2.0, Information management, Intranets

Enterprise RSS, what?

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James Dellow has published to Slideshare a deck that could be used as part of the upcoming Enterprise RSS Day of Action.

Posted by jamesr at 12:54 AM | Permalink
Categories: Enterprise 2.0

Australian Museum uses Open Calais to tag collection

Josh Catone has written about Australian Museum tagging their online collection. To quote:

The automatically generated tags at right were created by the API for some swim wear designed by Speedo for the 1991 Australian swimming team that competed at the World Swimming Championships in Perth. Open Calais was correctly able to identify some important locations in the document -- Perth where the competition took place, and Sydney where Speedo is based -- as well as an important corporation (Speedo). It also picked up the name of the designer, and the name of the person who owned the suits before the museum.

Posted by jamesr at 09:01 AM | Permalink
Categories: Enterprise 2.0, Information architecture

Enterprise RSS Day of Action - 24th April

Moves are well underway to organise an Enterprise RSS Day of Action for 24 April 2008. To quote:

The purpose of the Enterprise RSS Day of Action on the Thursday 24th April is to help raise awareness for the potential for Enterprise RSS.

For more information, visit the The Enterprise RSS Day of Action wiki.

Posted by jamesr at 09:59 AM | Permalink
Categories: Enterprise 2.0

A moderated approach to user-generated content

Marisa Peacock has written an article on moderation and user-generated content. To quote:

Adding it all up, user-generated content isn’t the menacing monster that legal feared it to be, after all. In fact, with more people moderating than generating, it seems that user-generated content is apt to be more self-censoring than most editorials.

Posted by jamesr at 06:56 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management, Enterprise 2.0

What's most important for success with enterprise 2.0?

Andrew McAfee has written a piece on success factors for enterprise 2.0. To quote:

I spoke earlier this week at the FASTForward conference in Orlando, and used the opportunity to toss out some conjectures about the factors that differentiate successful Enterprise 2.0 deployments from unsuccessful ones. These conjectures were not developed from any rigorous or comprehensive research, but instead are the inductive result of my work over the past two years to understand the use of emergent social software platforms in pursuit of business goals. I can’t claim that they’re complete, 100% correct, or ‘better’ than anyone else’s hypotheses. I present them at this point primarily to get the ideas out there, to stimulate discussion, and perhaps to provide some guidance.

Posted by jamesr at 08:15 AM | Permalink
Categories: Enterprise 2.0

Can social bookmarking improve search?

Daniela Barbosa explores the question: can social bookmarking improve search? To quote:

"Bookmarking Improve Web Search?" includes eleven experiments using del.icio.us designed to evaluate "different aspects of social bookmarking and their impact on web search". The main end results lead to the issue of needing critical mass which is still not here- the paper's authors estimate that only about on tenth of the web has been bookmarked and tagged in del.icio.us and therefore (at least when using only this domain) tagging is not yet ready to make a significant impact on search results.

Posted by jamesr at 10:00 AM | Permalink
Categories: Enterprise 2.0, Information architecture, Search tools

Clarify. Simplify. Implement.

Nathan Wallace has written about his clarify - simplify - implement approach to information management. To quote:

Relentlessly question, review and challenge the processes and solution being developed. Drive for consistency. Search for well-known models or applications you can copy. Don't be afraid to change basic assumptions, where simplicity can be enhanced. Always challenge the value of edge cases and try to eradicate them. Work hard to remove every single process, click, page view, icon, etc until you have something so simple that it feels right to everyone involved. (This is the primary value adding activity for IT.)

Read this post several times, as it contains important insight. Nathan is a CIO with a deep technical background and a thoughtful approach to everything that he does. In these three words, he outlines a radically different approach to designing and deploying enterprise solutions. Great stuff!

Posted by jamesr at 07:01 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management, Enterprise 2.0, Information management

Wiki markup has no future

Ok, I'm going to confront the elephant in the room: wiki markup has no future. I know I'm going to burnt at the stake by all the wiki fanatics, but let me give a few reasons...

Back to the future

Back in the bad old days, you needed to know all those strange HTML tags in order to publish a web page. Recognising that this wasn't desirable, we've worked very hard to develop publishing tools (FrontPage, Dreamweaver, content management systems) that eliminate the need for this knowledge.

While these tools are still imperfect, they have done much to open up the web to non-technical authors and publishers. Certainly in any serious situation, WYSIWYG is expected, and often demanded.

So along comes wikis, and voila, a new set of markup to learn! Suddenly we're back to putting stars for bullets, three equals signs for a horizontal rule, etc, etc. How is this a forward step?

It's about the users

Wiki markup is not easy, and it takes some learning. I'm a former developer, but even I have to have a reference sheet handy when I start to use a new wiki tool.

The lack of WYSIWYG editing is a big barrier to adoption within organisations, and on the wider web. There are only a limited number of users that have the time, skills and inclination to learn wiki markup. It's a fundamental usability problem, and the spread of wikis will always be niche as long as wiki markup remains.

They're all different

It doesn't help that all the wikis have invented their own set of special markup. Similar, but different enough that each wiki needs to be learnt separately.

Yes, I know there are moves towards coming up with "standard" wiki markup, but that misses the point. There's no future in wiki markup, so who cares if it's standardised!

It's not about the markup

It was never about the markup anyway. Wikis are about making creating and editing content trivial, about creating structure as you go, about tracking changes and activity (plus more). The "wiki way" never demanded the use of strangle little text commands.

It could even be argued that the wiki way is all about usability, so wiki markup is actually opposed to the core principles being pursued. What could be easier than just typing straight into the wiki, with buttons for formatting?

WYSIWYG

What I want to see in the wiki editing environment:

• Full WYSIWYG editing
• Simple, locked-down formatting (bold, italic, paragraph styles)
• Point and click image insertion
• Simple table creation and editing
• Easy mechanism for creating links
• Seamless cut-and-pasting from Word (stripping out the rubbish)
• Spell-checking
• Multiple levels of undo

In other words, all the basics that you would expect in any editing environment, online or desktop. Note that this isn't changing any other aspects of wikis, that's the good stuff, it's just fixing the editing environment.

Into the future

I'm not surprised that open-source wikis don't have WYSIWYG editing, but that's no excuse for commercial offerings. This needs to be resolved immediately, and taken seriously by wiki developers. More than just an average WYSIWYG editing tool, this needs to work extremely well.

I would go one step further: don't deploy a wiki for a broad audience (or within the enterprise) if it doesn't have WYSIWYG editing. That will start to put some pressure on the developers, and should help to speed the permanent death of wiki markup. RIP and long live wikis.

(As ever, apologies for the lack of blog commenting. The site redesign and upgrade now has light at the end of the tunnel, so hopefully soon! Feel free to email me in the meantime.)

[Followup: I've posted some of the comments I've received on this topic, seems like I've struck a chord with some.]

Posted by jamesr at 03:04 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management, Enterprise 2.0

The trouble with web 2.0

Alexander Wilms has written an article on the trouble with web 2.0, from an enterprise context. To quote:

We have seen that there are differences between the Web and corporate environments. While the Web is a deregulated environment, with millions of users contributing and easy access to data, corporations have to restrict their users for many reasons, thereby limiting the potential of the Web 2.0 patterns. While Web 2.0 patterns work well in the Web there might be obstacles and issues when they are implemented in a corporate environment without adaptation. "Might" because every company is an individual organization and there are no easy, "one-size-fits-all" solution. On the other hand the Web 2.0 patterns have been proven to be too successful to be ignored.

Posted by jamesr at 08:30 AM | Permalink
Categories: Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0

2008: the year web 2.0 hits the enterprise, says Forrester

ReadWriteWeb has posted an entry on enterprise 2.0 predictions by Forrester. To quote:

According to Forrester Research, there will be "strong demand" for web 2.0 tools in the enterprise in 2008. Even though 42% of enterprises say adding web 2.0 tools is not on their agenda, according to a Q3 2007 survey, Forrester expects that half of those will change their mind and embrace web 2.0 tools by year end. In the report "Top Enterprise Web 2.0 Predictions For 2008," analyst Oliver Young gives three reasons why he thinks 2008 is the year that "IT departments will take their heads out of the sand and embrace web 2.0 technologies."

Posted by jamesr at 07:00 AM | Permalink
Categories: Enterprise 2.0

Trend map for 2008 and beyond

Nowandnext.com and Future Exploration Network have created a trend map for 2008 and beyond, covering key aspects of the online and physical worlds. To quote:

While last year’s map was based on the London tube map, the 2008 map is derived from Shanghai’s underground routes. Limited to just five lines, the map uncovers key trends across Society, Politics, Demographics, Economy, and Technology.

Posted by jamesr at 09:00 AM | Permalink
Categories: Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, Knowledge management

Librarians challenge Web 2.0 myths

The Register has published results of research into web 2.0 and search amongst youth. To quote:

According to a British Library study many of the assumptions made about the Google generation - defined as those born since 1993 - fail to stack up to the evidence.

Among these, that the Google generation are search experts - something labelled "a dangerous myth". "A careful look at the literature over the past 25 years finds no improvement (or deterioration) in young people's information skills" the report said. Also there is no hard evidence to prove the Google generation needs information immediately and that it has no tolerance for delay in getting such data.

Social networking also comes up short. Around seven per cent of students agreed they were "very" or "extremely likely" to use social networking for a variety of tasks such as online discussions or sharing ideas. But the rest, the study concluded, "are not interested".

Posted by jamesr at 08:07 AM | Permalink
Categories: Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, Search tools

Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum 2008 (Sydney, February)

Ross Dawson of Future Exploration Network will be hosting the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum 2008 on February 19 in Sydney. Enterprise 2.0 is an important topic for many organisations, but the challenge is finding how best to deploy these new technologies and ideas.

Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum will provide a pragmatic overview of how Web 2.0 and social media technologies are being applied inside the enterprise to create business value. This unique half-day event will be centred on case studies of how leading Australian and global organisations have benefited from these technologies, and the key factors in successful implementation.

Ross Dawson is a leading thinking in this space and a truly compelling presenter. He has also assembled a stellar cast of thought-leaders and implementers:

• David Backley, Chief Technology Officer, Westpac Banking Corporation
• Peter Evans-Greenwood, Chief Technology Officer, Capgemini Australia
• Brian Haverty, Editorial Director, CNET Networks Australia
• Andrew McAfee, Associate Professor, Harvard Business School
• Sheryle Moon, Chief Executive Officer, Australian Information Industry Association
• Victor Rodrigues, Software Development Manager, Cochlear
• Euan Semple, Former Head of Knowledge Management, BBC
• Jonathan Stern, Business Unit Executive, Lotus Software, Australia and New Zealand

Step Two Designs is a supporter of this event, and I can personally recommend it to anyone looking to explore these ideas. Not to be missed!

[Full event details]

Posted by jamesr at 02:33 PM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations, Enterprise 2.0, Information management, Intranets

Self-service publishing: Implement with care

Abigail Lewis-Bowen writes about carefully implementing wikis and other enterprise 2.0 tools. To quote:

First of all, it's important to provide Wikis and Blogs only after processes for publishing “formal” information channels to the Intranet are well established. If the right people are publishing to the right place on the Intranet, and there is good editorial workflow and governance, then the Intranet is sturdy enough to add an open, less-structured layer of content. If there are no good controls in place, then handing everyone a Wiki to use will blur the lines between informal and formal communication. What’s worse, it may threaten the information structure needed to support robust personalization and effective information discovery.

This is an interesting post, and I agree with Abigail about the potential dangers of collaboration tools (see my article Collaboration tools are anti knowledge sharing?). Abigail also makes some excellent, and very practical suggestions. Yet I was also uncomfortable about the overall approach.

Thinking about it further, these are my concerns:

• Abigail recommends waiting until the intranet is well-managed before rolling out tools such as wikis. We don't have that long. Like it or not, these tools are rapidly spreading and we have to put in place some management models as a matter of urgency.
• The suggestions are written as rules designed to be "barriers to entry". The problem is, we can't actually enforce them, as no-one reports to us.
• Worse yet, some of these rules are written as if wikis are the "enemy" that must be boxed in. Do we have automated expiry of content on our intranets, as we are suggesting for wikis? I think not.
• The danger is that by adding a large amount of extra work (such as mandatory metadata), collaboration tools will simply fail to take off.
• At the end of the day, we need to find ways of engaging with the wider organisation on these topics, rather than being seen as "gatekeepers".

Again, though, some great suggestions. The more we discuss these topics the better...

Posted by jamesr at 07:30 AM | Permalink
Categories: Enterprise 2.0, Intranets

BT web 2.0 adoption case study

Richard Dennison has written about the adoption of web 2.0 at BT. To quote:

The power of social software is undeniable in the free, anarchic world of the global internet. But what happens when you bring these tools into the constrained, policy-driven, risk-averse world of the corporate intranet where the user population is small, where expressing oneself as an individual and on a personal level can feel threatening, and where management is watching your every move? Well, that’s just what one of the world’s leading providers of communications solutions, BT, has chosen to do. Richard Dennison, BT’s Internal Programme Manager, tells the story.

[Thanks to Alex Manchester.]

Posted by jamesr at 06:20 AM | Permalink
Categories: Enterprise 2.0, Intranets

Is Facebook in the enterprise an oxymoron?

Tony Byrne has written an article on Facebook as an enterprise solution. To quote:

The dramatic rise of Facebook among professionals has called the question on "Enterprise 2.0" long before many people were ready or able to confront it. Some enterprises block Facebook.com on their networks. Others have embraced Facebook as their Intranet. Most others remain ignorant of the phenomenon, but probably not for long. Facebook is more than a website though. It's a byproduct of a broader phenomenon. Enterprises should embrace the concepts behind it, but not fall head over heels for any platform that isn't authentically embraced by rank-and-file employees.

There are many wise words in this article, and it should definitely be read by anyone rushing into the idea of "Facebook as the intranet". To Tony's points, I would also add the following:

What about the content?

While Facebook recognises that relationships exist between people, something that most enterprise solutions have failed to do, there still remains the "content" needed by staff.

Do we really see HR policies being copied onto Facebook and somehow propagated virally as Facebook apps? Are we going to use Facebook to submit expense claims? Of course not. Yet, this is seems to be the argument presented by those who ask "why would anyone still be doing intranet 1.0?"

The reality is that there is a much richer information ecosystem than just relationships (Facebook) or content (intranets), and we need both. "Facebook as the intranet" is therefore simplistic at best, or misleading at worst.

Posted by jamesr at 12:08 PM | Permalink
Categories: Enterprise 2.0, Intranets

Building enterprise 2.0 on culture 1.0

Nathan Wallace gives us another great update on JCintranet, the intranet built as a wiki. To quote:

Over 18 months, JCintra amassed 23,335 content contributions from 239 (~70%) people. The number of contributions per month continues to increase steadily. But, JCintra continues to function as an incredibly easy to use Intranet, rather than as a genuine Wiki. In fact, 85% of our 3000 pages only have one contributing author. (Interestingly, this behaviour occurs even at Atlassian, who build Wiki software as their business!)

Posted by jamesr at 06:42 AM | Permalink
Categories: Enterprise 2.0, Intranets

Social networks study released - MySpace & Facebook are different after all!

faberNovel Consulting has released a paper on social networks, reposted on Read/WriteWeb. To quote:

faberNovel Consulting has released a research paper on social networks. The paper is an excellent theoretical overview of social networks and the trends in this important market. I particularly liked the following two slides, showing the types of social networks and how they're positioned. Interesting that in terms of identity, Facebook and MySpace are at opposite ends of the spectrum - Facebook is viewed as "real identity", whereas MySpace is "fanntasized identity"! The whole set of slides is below, via Slideshare.

Posted by jamesr at 06:34 AM | Permalink
Categories: Enterprise 2.0, Knowledge management

Followup to collaboration is anti knowledge sharing?

A few days ago I posted an article titled: collaboration tools are anti knowledge sharing? This was a deliberately provocative article, and I've now had an excellent response from Michael Sampson. To quote:

If the team has done a proper job of collecting and collating all of their discussions, all of the document editions, all of their meeting notes and so forth, that is not a collection of "knowledge" ... it's a set of data points and information items on the route to a final destination. James writes that the inability for merely anyone to understand the context of each item ("What is this file, is it a final or a draft? How does it relate to this other document? Where is the main project plan?") is a failing of the tool.

I don't buy that.

As I've commented on his post, I agree with everything that he's said. This is definitely not a technology problem, although it can be a problem caused by technology in the absence of appropriate governance.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of collaboration, and have given up on the "white elephant" KM solutions a long time ago.

What I'm concerned about is that collaboration is very much viewed as a technology issue by IT areas, leading to it spreading in an unmanaged way. This is the lesson we didn't learn from the Notes era, and are just about to be repeated in the SharePoint era if we aren't careful.

(I've got more coming on the solutions, not just the problems, so watch this space!)

PS. Michael has published some superb resources relating to collaboration, including the 7 Pillars of IT-Enabled Team Productivity. See the bottom of Michael's post for a longer list of resources.

Posted by jamesr at 06:15 PM | Permalink
Categories: Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0

Collaboration tools are anti knowledge sharing?

There is a clear need for collaboration within organisations, and the rollout of collaboration tools will bring many benefits. What is not widely recognised, however, is that the unmanaged spread of collaboration tools can work against knowledge sharing.

While collaboration tools work extremely well for the staff using them, they can lead to hundreds (or thousands) of information 'silos', making it harder for other staff to find required information.

This briefing will explore this issue, drawing on experiences gained across many different organisations.

Collaboration works well

Collaboration spaces work very well for the staff using them. Team and project spaces are a particularly good example of this, providing an effective space for team members to communicate and collaborate in.

The ability to 'work in' these spaces is one of their greatest strengths, allowing easy sharing of content, documents, discussions, diaries and more. Far richer than file shares, intranets or document management systems, the current generation of collaboration tools have the potential to deliver considerable productivity benefits.

What also makes these spaces successful is the 'shared context' amongst users. Because they are actively engaged in the ongoing use of these spaces, everyone knows what's happening, and where to find key information.

In practice, collaboration areas naturally evolve to fit the needs of the staff who are using them, with the spaces matching the idiosyncrasies of the groups they serve.

[CM Briefing 2007-17, read the full article]

Posted by jamesr at 09:59 PM | Permalink
Categories: Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, Information management, James' articles, Knowledge management

Taking the best of both worlds

A little while back I wrote an entry on enterprise 2.0, characterising the conflict between the libertarians and the corporate suits (noting the deliberate stereotyping). To quote:

On one side we have what I would call the "libertarians", the body-and-soul evangelists of enterprise 2.0 technologies and approaches. While not all speaking with the one voice, there is a common theme of "get out of the way and let it happen". In other words, encourage the release of enterprise 2.0 technologies into an organisation, let staff find their own uses for it, and information management problems will start to melt away.

On the other side, you have the "corporate suits". Mostly driven from an IT, IM or KM perspective, there is typically a focus on enterprise content management (ECM), and the general adoption of "enterprise" solutions. This includes products that have been in the market for some time, such as web content management systems, document management systems, records management systems, and the like.

The purpose of the post was to argue for the need to find a middle ground between the two extremes, recognising that both are wrong. In this piece I'd like to explore that further, by asking: what do we get if we take the best of both worlds?

The idea is to move the debate beyond black-and-white, towards exploring how we make all this work in practice, how we avoid the pitfalls and maximise the benefits. To that end, here are my lists of what I would take from each approach, and what is currently offered by neither...

Best of the libertarian approach

• support for a heterogeneous mix of tools within the organisation
• ability for individuals to select tools to fit their specific needs
• adoption of solutions driven by local needs
• inherent flexibility in the use of tools
• driven by a focus on innovation
• support for experimentation in both technology and approaches
• ability of individuals to tailor, configure and integrate solutions
• capability for individuals to contribute, and not just consume
• explicit support for collaboration and other social effects
• endorsement for both internally and externally hosted solutions
• use of low-cost, low-footprint solutions that can be rapidly deployed
• use of modern web standards and platforms
• focus on "flows" rather than "stocks"

Best of the corporate suits approach

• corporately supported platforms
• ability to deploy onto corporate servers
• dedicated IT support
• backup and other core IT services
• consideration of security and compliance issues
• recognition as part of corporate strategy
• senior management support and endorsement
• centrally allocated budget
• single sign-on across applications
• integration with core enterprise solutions, such as HR and finance
• specific projects to deploy solutions, where needed
• longer-term strategies

Currently offered by neither

• overall owner of enterprise 2.0 approaches, beyond the technology platforms
• dedicated individual or team playing an internal mentoring role
• development of best practice guides, how-to manuals, tips and other resources
• focus on building expertise and knowledge within the organisation
• capture and communication of local successes and failures
• well-established community of practice supporting enterprise 2.0 approaches
• collaboration with other organisations to share knowledge
• high standard of usability and accessibility across all solutions
• clear vision of the future of enterprise work practice
• singular focus on resolving business problems and meeting needs

Posted by jamesr at 08:27 PM | Permalink
Categories: Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0

The ties that find

Andrew McAfee has written about the value of weak ties, as part of a business case for enterprise 2.0. To quote:

Granovetters' great insight in SWT and later work was that these activities help strengthen already strong ties, but that weak ties might actually be the more important ones for innovation and knowledge sharing. Strong ties and weak ties are exactly what they sound like. Strong ties between people arise from long-term, frequent, and sustained interactions; weak ties from infrequent and more casual ones. The 'problem' with strong ties is that if persons A and B have a strong tie, they’re also likely to be strongly tied to all members of each other's networks. In other words, there’s likely to be a lot of overlap in their friendship circles.

Posted by jamesr at 11:06 AM | Permalink
Categories: Enterprise 2.0

Input by many, decisions by ????

Andrew McAfee has written an article on the "great decoupling" and the impact on decision making in organisations. To quote:

In that post, however, I think I actually understated the extent to which information technology is opening up new possibilities about decision making and governance within organizations. In "The Great Decoupling" I focused only on disappearing information costs, but there’s also another very interesting development: the appearance of technologies for collecting and distilling distributed knowledge in novel ways.

Posted by jamesr at 08:50 AM | Permalink
Categories: Enterprise 2.0

Enterprise 2.0: working in the middle ground

vs

It's been interesting to observe how the battle lines are shaping up between the evangelists of enterprise 2.0 on the one side, and those perceived to be resisting such technologies on the other side. In this piece, however, I'm going to argue that both sides are wrong, and that we need to find a third way.

Libertarians

On one side we have what I would call the "libertarians", the body-and-soul evangelists of enterprise 2.0 technologies and approaches. While not all speaking with the one voice, there is a common theme of "get out of the way and let it happen". In other words, encourage the release of enterprise 2.0 technologies into an organisation, let staff find their own uses for it, and information management problems will start to melt away.

This camp even sees that senior management support may be corrosive to enterprise 2.0, as success relies on a groundswell of "grass roots" adoption. There is certainly no place for policies or governance in this world view, or the direct management of technologies by central teams.

Corporate suits

On the other side, you have the "corporate suits". Mostly driven from an IT, IM or KM perspective, there is typically a focus on enterprise content management (ECM), and the general adoption of "enterprise" solutions. This includes products that have been in the market for some time, such as web content management systems, document management systems, records management systems, and the like.

This camp focuses on developing overall enterprise strategies, information management governance and change management. Supporting this side are a large number of well-established vendors, and the analyst firms that surround them.

The debate between these two sides is often polarised, argued in black-and-white terms. The libertarians see that enterprise software is a dinosaur overdue for the asteroid, while the corporate suits see the threat of unmanaged software use.

Both sides are wrong

The difficulty with the libertarian approach is the reliance on problems just "sorting themselves out" if the right tools are made available. The challenge is that while these tools (including collaboration tools) are great for the individual and the team, they increase the fragmentation of information across the organisation as a whole. (More on this later.)

This is the lesson we didn't learn from the Lotus Notes era, where we ended up with tens of thousands of Notes databases scattered far and wide. And don't forget the impact of the easy availability of Access databases and Excel spreadsheets.

That's not to say that the new generation of tools haven't given some consideration to this, but it's naive to think that organisations will simply "self-organise" a solution that works for both the individual and the organisation as a whole.

On the other side, the corporate suits have been in trouble for some time now. The adoption of these systems is very low, and the inherent complexity of the products is hurting organisations. There are questions on whether a fully-centralised model for information management can ever work within modern, complex organisations.

In practice, very little meaningful discussion occurs within the traditional "enterprise" space about how to get staff working productively in these solutions, let alone how to connect together the huge information silos.

Finding the middle ground

Neither "libertarian" or "corporate suits" extreme works, and we're not really learning much by arguing between black and white. Instead, we need to be exploring the grey, the middle ground, the middle way.

Yes, we absolutely need the kinds of capabilities delivered by enterprise 2.0 technologies, and this addressing a huge unmet need within organisations. Can we stop their use? No. Should we try to stop or restrict their use? No.

We do need plans and strategies though, along with some simple guidance or governance for staff. We need to find much more mature ways of managing processes, and shaping outcomes. We need to let individuals and teams drive adoptions, but play a strong leadership role to ensure that the end outcome is desirable for all.

This is where all my thinking is around at the moment. The first outcome is the simple (simplistic?) model for collaboration adoption that I recently posted, and there's more to come.

Let's stop demonising either side, and instead ask the questions:

• Where do we want to end up?
• What does the best solution look like, and how do we get there from here?
• How to we make things work in the complex organisational environments we have in the real world?

Posted by jamesr at 11:34 AM | Permalink
Categories: Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0