Column Two

Implementing enterprise 2.0 in the real world

Written by James Robertson, published November 3, 2008

Categorised under: Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, Intranets

Now that the hype of enterprise 2.0 is starting to settle, it’s clear that there are many valuable approaches that can (and should) be put into practice.

Intranet and information managers are busy, however, pulled in many directions by different stakeholders. Resources are limited, and senior management visibility is often low. Most teams do not have the luxury of playing with technology, without some level of accountability.

So what should teams be doing in the real world?

These are my suggestions:

1. Don’t be afraid to experiment. At its foundation, innovation is driven by a spirit of experimentation. I’ve long argued that the ‘traditional’ approaches to intranets (and other enterprise platforms) hasn’t been working, so we have everything to gain by trying some different ideas.
2. Take a ’safe-fail’ approach. Enterprise projects are very conservative, moving much more slowly than the wider world. To increase the pace of change, we need to take a ’safe-fail’ approach, allowing a range of ideas to be tried with the expectation that some (perhaps most) will fail. The key is to have these failures to strengthen the strategy, not weaken it.
3. Have a clear purpose. Enterprise 2.0 is just a means to an end. We need to have clear business goals and end-user benefits driving our projects, beyond fuzzy ideas of ‘knowledge sharing’ or ‘creating a collaborative culture’.
4. Take it seriously. Don’t just ‘roll out’ a solution and hope for the best. We need to make every effort to have these new approaches succeed, including creating usable tools, and establishing good communications, marketing, training and support.
5. Make it work now. There is a remarkable consensus on what future directions should be, and how things might look in the longer term. Our projects, however, cannot just plan for the future. If staff don’t use our solutions in the short-term, there won’t be a long term (for us or our projects).
6. Match the culture. Technology can, to some degree, change the culture of an organisation. More realistically however, our projects should match the current culture to give the best chances of success. We shouldn’t be trying to deploy solutions that staff or the organisation as a whole aren’t ready for.
7. Build on the experiences of others. The early adopters have blazed at least some of the trails ahead, and we should build on their experiences. This allows us to avoid ‘reinventing the wheel’, or deploying solutions that are founded solely on idealism.

The last point is the perhaps most important. I have no patience for breathless enthusiasm about enterprise 2.0, divorsed from the real-world realities of the organisations that we work in. Instead, I think it’s time to take a more measured and mature approach to enterprise 2.0, building on past experience and best practices.

For example, we want to establish an ‘internal Facebook’ within our organisations, but our earlier efforts with ‘expertise directories’ failed at an appalling rate.  What personal motivations amongst our staff are we going to target to obtain success this time around?

We know that in most organisations, personalisation often doesn’t work, and ‘my sites’ will not be used. So why are so many organisations betting their entire strategies on one (or both) of these two approaches?

On the other hand, projects by organisations such as British Airways and Scottrade show us some of the many enterprise 2.0 approaches that do work in practice.

I think there are many important changes to make, and much success to be found. So let’s take a middle road, experimenting with new ideas but focusing on delivering success right now.

Your thoughts?

Tags: Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, Intranets