Recently in Enterprise 2.0 Category

Today I spoke at the Walkley Public Affairs conference, organized by the MEAA, the peak body representing workers in the Australian media industry. I spoke on the Enterprise 2.0 panel, running through many of the issues I've raised on the Enterprise 2.0 Forum blog.

Here are a few summarized comments and reflections on what I heard while I was at the event from late morning to the end of the first day.

As I walked in, Sam Mostyn of IAG was saying, reflecting on what she'd seen at the insurer, that 'what builds loyalty and commitment is trust'. That is a fundamentally important point. Corporate loyalty is evanescent today, particularly with younger workers. The only potential source of loyalty is trusting your employees. Not trusting them automatically results in zero loyalty. This is deeply relevant to the issue of blocking or allowing social networks in the enterprise.

On the next panel, Mark Pesce commented that social networks in Australia are extremely shallow. Outrageous news travels very fast. At the Future of Journalism conference comments that Roy Greenslade made about Andrew Jaspan, editor of The Age, were immediately heard. Messages propagate ubiquitously, in this case enabled by journalists in the audience live-blogging the event. Those who were interested in what Greenslade said heard about it almost instantaneously. Mark describes Twitter as his twenty-first century brain trust, extending his capabilities by giving him access to many with complementary knowledge. He describes this as 'hyperempowerment'.

I recently did the opening keynote on The Future of Business at the Tandberg Summit 2008, which brings together the clients, distributors and partners of the global videoconferencing firm, and stayed for most of the first day. I found it extremely interesting being among a large people who were concerned with implementing video in organizations, as these are almost entirely different people to those concerned with Enterprise 2.0 approaches, though their objectives and issues are very similar. More thoughts on that in a moment. It’s probably worth setting the scene with a review of the conference by CRN Magazine, titled Tandberg Summit 2008: Video killed the radio star. The entire article is worth a read – I’ve excerpted below the section covering my presentation:

A highlight of the conference was a keynote by Ross Dawson, chairman of Future Exploration Network, who provided insight into the dynamics within an organisation and the video communications market. Referring to internal business practices, Dawson stressed the importance of collaboration between employees and identifying personal qualities that may help foster growth.

A rather popular topic these days is the risks to organizations of using social networks. An article in today’s Australian Financial Review examines the issue in detail, with an interview of me (excerpted below) hopefully balancing out the other opinions expressed in the article. Unfortunately the way I was quoted seemed to overemphasize my cautions relative to the benefits I discussed.

I am finding it very tiresome to continuously hear security consultants and vendors with big PR budgets go on endlessly about risks, without ever mentioning business benefits. This drone gets into executives’ heads, and as a result discussion of social networks – and many other potentially valuable business tools – focuses on risk and not benefit.

My Enterprise 2.0 Governance Framework explicitly addresses risks, benefits, and actions. It is critical to acknowledge, understand, and minimize risk, but executives are equally culpable if they ignore business value as if they ignore risk.

In the interview with the journalist I basically said that transparency increases business value, however providing transparency must be done intelligently and strategically. The danger is that executives become frightened of the risks, so unintelligently don’t provide transparency, and thus negatively impact the company’s value. Effective business leaders understand that in a complex world business value requires a highly nuanced approach, rather than the black and white view of organizations that is so frequently peddled. Excerpts from the article are below:

When one of Australia’s leading evangelists for Enterprise 2.0 acknowledges “there are some real dangers in an increasingly transparent world”, it’s worth listening.

Ross Dawson, chairman of the Future Exploration Network, is a great fan of online collaboration and communication, but admits there are limits. While research has revealed “a positive impact on stock prices where there is more transparency”, he warns that companies which transparently reported their customers’ private information, for example, would quickly see the opposite effect on share prices.

Some more media coverage of the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum (also see previous media coverage of Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum):

Online Banking Review did a review of Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum titled Don’t Be Afraid of Web 2.0. It begins:

Large corporates are struggling to relinquish the control they must sacrifice in order to successfully leverage Enterprise 2.0 applications. That’s the consensus from a recent forum on Enterprise 2.0 held by the Future Exploration Network.

In addition, the Social Media Show recently did a podcast interview of Peter Evan-Greenwood of Capgemini, who spoke at the Forum. Des Walsh's conversation with Peter covers:
• Google Apps
• cultural change issues that come up with the introduction of Web 2.0 technology in the enterprise
• the emerging role of Enterprise 2.0 in the government sector
• how the technology helps companies get measurable business value from their knowledge work processes.

In organizational network analysis circles, an MIT study on how people find information is often cited. The research showed that in an organization, people were five times more likely to go to people than to databases to get answers to their questions. So knowledge workers’ productivity is strongly related to their social networks, in terms of who they know who can help them, and whether there is sufficient trust and reciprocal value in the relationship that they get a response.

It is far more efficient and effective for people to be able to identify the most likely people to help them rather than barraging everyone with the one query and hoping that someone will respond. The early knowledge management systems were largely based on broadcast systems within organizations to be get help on particularly issues. In many cases companies used broadcast emails to get help.

People’s email inboxes have long been so overloaded that broadcast emails are rarely welcome. Certainly the highest leverage approaches to connecting knowledge effectively are in enhancing organizational networks, in terms of how well people know each others’ expertise and have strong social bonds. However now that a whole layer of new communication tools has emerged, there are new possibilities. Twitter in particular is already used within communities to ask questions and get ready responses, and many Twitterers will attest they have got great answers to pressing questions. So the question arises as to whether Twitter should be used as an organizational tool.

On week I delivered a keynote in London on behalf of LexisNexis to a select group of senior executives of large professional services firms. The broad theme was the future of professional services and in particular practice management. In my speech I emphasized the network perspective on professional firms.

In an economy where value is increasingly based on deep professional knowledge and relationships, it is increasingly valid to ask why professional firms exist. Why don’t professionals practice as individuals, and collaborate with other professionals simply as client situations require it? In fact there is currently a significant shift to professionals working independently or in very small groups. Of course there are a number of good answers to this. Most importantly, the existence of professional firms should facilitate different expertise to be brought together seamlessly to address clients’ issues and create uniquely valuable offerings.

However this is only valid if the firm is well connected internally. Professionals need to be aware of each others’ expertise, and actively bring that together in teams to meet client needs. I have described some of the key issues underlying that in my presentation Tapping Networks to Bring the Best of the Firm to Clients that I did at the Network Roundtable conference last November.

On Friday I caught up with Euan Semple in London. It was great to meet, as we’d just conversed over email, voice, and video up until then, and of course had him present over video at our Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum in February.

It recently occurred to me that when I catch up with interesting people, I should make a brief video at the end of the meeting to summarize the most intriguing ideas that had come up in the course of our conversation. This is the first time I have tried it, though I hope to do this a lot more regularly now. One of the biggest benefits is capturing for myself the most interesting insights from the conversations I have. It’s also great to share these with others.

In this case I did a very poor job of making the video. First the tape ran out in the middle of the conversation. Then I rewound the tape, and ended up going over the beginning of the earlier conversation. Hopefully I have learned my lesson from this – there are still some very interesting points made by Euan in the video. Forgive the discontinuities.

There has been some great media coverage of the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum. Below is a summary of some of the articles and media that are available online. It is very encouraging that the mainstream media is not only taking up these themes, but giving it such positive coverage - the articles are well worth a read.

Sydney Morning Herald: Facebook up to it
Excellent review of the event and the rise of Enterprise 2.0

Smartcompany: Web 2.0: Our winning ways
Interview with Ross Dawson on the state of Enterprise 2.0

MIS The Scoop podcast: Australian Enterprise 2.0 lessons revealed
Podcast of excerpts from the Enterprise 2.0 case studies presented at the Executive Forum

Internal Comms Hub: Enterprise 2.0 should be harnessed as a strategic asset
Overview of the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum and key lessons

Computerworld: Janssen-Cilag dances Enterprise 2.0 jig
Review of Janssen-Cilag case study presented at the Executive Forum

The Financial Standard: Wikis may be working for Westpac
Review of Westpac case study presented at the Executive Forum

Metaverse Journal: Enterprise 2.0 forum - Business IS getting it
Review of Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum

NineMSN: Social networking sites help boost business: expert
Ross Dawson’s on the value of social networking for organizations

Social Media Show: Podcast interviews with David Holloway and Stephen Collins

[UPDATE]
The Australian: Business yet to harness Web 2.0
Review of Web 2.0 in Australia, quoting speakers at Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum

An article in the Sydney Morning Herald titled Facebook up to it by doyen technology journalist Graeme Philipson gives a great review of the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum from last week, excerpted below.

Until now, Web 2.0 applications have mostly affected individuals. Companies and government organisations have largely retained more traditional methods of communication. The primary collaborative technology for most organisations in the modern world has become email, which is very much a Web 1.0, or first generation, internet application.

That is now changing. Web 2.0 applications are increasingly finding their way into the enterprise. This phenomenon has, inevitably, been dubbed Enterprise 2.0. That term was invented last year by Harvard Business School professor Andrew McAfee, who has emerged as something of an international authority on the subject. Last week I heard a remarkable presentation by Professor McAfee on the state of play with Enterprise 2.0 worldwide. His talk was beamed in via Skype from Orlando, Florida, where he was attending an enterprise search conference. He spoke to 200 of us assembled in a conference room in Sydney's Luna Park to discuss Enterprise 2.0 in Australia.

…

The event I attended where we heard Professor McAfee's words of wisdom was the grandly named "Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum", run by Sydney company Future Enterprise Network (FEN). FEN (futureexploration.net) is run by Ross Dawson, who has become one of Australia's leading internet gurus in recent years. He also runs regular events on the future of media.

In addition to the insights from Andrew McAfee, the article covers the points raised by Euan Semple, who drove the BBC’s move into social media, and the many real live practitioners of Enterprise 2.0 who are in Sydney. It discusses the reluctance by some to embrace these technologies, but also suggests that this shift is inevitable. This is probably the best one-stop review of the event – have a read!

James Gardner, head of innovation at Lloyds TSB, writes consistently on his blog Bankervision, disclosing some of the key issues involved in innovating in a major bank. In a recent post New ways of collaborating at the bank, James writes about how Lloyds TSB is piloting social media such as blogs. Some excerpts from his below show how blogging can change how corporations work.

We have one blog, for example, that documents the trials and tribulations of a member of the team that is implementing the social media pilot for us. Along the way there have been a couple of roadbumps, of course, and this particular blog offers the opinions of the team on the ground as things have gone wrong. It is a very positive and welcome read. Quite often, one doesn't have a deep understanding of the real issues that caused the problem in the first place. Sometimes, you want the details without all the unpeeling that goes on before you can get them. This is a blog that does that.

...

In the wake of the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum, Smartcompany magazine has published an interview with me titled Web 2.0: Our winning ways. It begins:

Entrepreneur Ross Dawson is a leading international expert on the way businesses are using web 2.0 in Australia – and he has good news.

After lagging behind our international counterparts in the enterprise 2.0 stakes, Australia is starting to catch up in its use of blogs, wikis, social networks, social search and virtual worlds.

Ross tells Amanda Gome what’s hot, how businesses are benefiting – and what’s destined for the 2.0 dustbin.

A few brief selections from my responses to the interview:

At last I am very encouraged. The response from people at the conference shows there is a lot happening. Up until now organisations have been shy about putting up their hands and talking about what they are doing. Up until now there has also been disparate things being done by different users in different departments. But now things are being squarely addressed by executives at the top of the company so people are prepared to talk about it.

Companies are striving to create more value from the participation of their employees, customers and suppliers by using web 2.0.

...

From a couple of months before the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum held last week, I had been hoping to create some kind of governance framework or implementation framework for Enterprise 2.0 that would be useful at the event.

Last year I created our Web 2.0 Framework, which has now been downloaded around 40,000 times and I gather been used by quite a few organizations in their planning and strategy. This time I wanted to create something that would be useful to help organizations understand and address both the risks and business value of Enterprise 2.0 approaches.

What I have seen in most large organizations is that senior executives’ amorphous understanding of the risks in Enterprise 2.0 has overwhelmed their equally fuzzy grasp of their potential to create business value. A governance perspective articulates and responds to the risks to the business, and also ensures that value is not left on the table – a very important aspect of executive accountability.

In the end I didn’t have time to do the task justice, but quickly pulled together a rough framework to use in my kick-off presentation for the Forum, as below.

In the wake of the Enteprise 2.0 Executive Forum, Peter-Evans Greenwood, CTO of Capgemini Australia, has written in considerably more detail on his thoughts on culture and generational change, which he and others spoke about on the final panel on the path forward.

I have a theory. It seems that most people learn something in their early to mid 20s, and then spend the rest of their career happily doing the same thing over and over again. …. Once they’ve established what it is they do they just want to keep doing it, hoping that the world will remain as it was in their early adulthood.

…

If change is the driver in our organizations, but our organizations are resistant to change, then the biggest challenge we face in not technical but the strategy we use to manage change. It’s quite easy to define a technically and economically possible solution that would provide a boost to our business, or even deliver a step change in capability. But if we cannot get our organization to deliver and then adopt the solution, all our work will be for naught.

…

So what does this mean for the IT department? No matter how important our success is to the success of the company as a whole, IT is a cost center; value is created at the business coal face, not in the IT department. It’s not our job to deploy the new Enterprise 2.0 solution that will revolutionize the business and then force the business to change. We need to focus on the users, rather than thinking in terms of technologies and IT assets, understand the challenges they are facing and provide them with tools and techniques that they can use to innovate themselves. IT as facilitator rather than asset manager. Or as I heard in the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum the other day, give them they structure they want and focus on managing the flow rather than trying to force them to do something a particular way.

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Here is a fantastic resources for those who couldn’t attend the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum (or those who did and want to share the ideas with their colleagues).

Mark Jones of MIS magazine’s The Scoop podcast series recorded three of the case studies presented at the event, and has created a 30 minute podcast of excerpts from the case studies presented by Victor Rodrigues of Cochlear, David Backley of Westpac, and Nathan Wallace of Janssen-Cilag. (See the event speaker bios for details.)

Click here to go to The Scoop podcast on "Australian Enterprise 2.0 lessons revealed".

All three case studies are extremely interesting, with some very honest sharing of each organization’s current activities, lessons learned, and vision moving forward. These kinds of case studies should prove an inspiration to other companies that are implementing Enterprise 2.0 or considering doing so.

We’ve already had a fair bit of media coverage for Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum. Some of the media coverage includes:

Janssen-Cilag dances Enterprise 2.0 jig (Computerworld)
“Pharmaceutical giant Janssen-Cilag has overhauled its enterprise applications to introduce collaboration with a wiki that integrates IT asset management and even micro-blogging.”

Wikis may be working for Westpac (The Sheet) [Note that registration is required.]
[UPDATE: The full story is available on The Financial Standard]
“The arrival of Gail Kelly at the helm of Westpac may accelerate the bank’s adoption of “Web 2.0” tools such as blogs, wikis and social networks, allowing staff to share information freely and collaborate online.”

Exploring the future of Enterprise 2.0 (Melcrum)
“Run from 8.30am-2pm the event took place at breakneck pace, and covered a massive amount on the topic of social media and Web 2.0 in the workplace. There was much talk of knowledge and knowledge workers, easing employee frustrations, helping individuals to do their jobs more easily, differentiating to attract and retain the best talent and increasing employee engagement (yes, all of this in just 5.5 hours).”

There was also last week’s coverage of Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum:

Social networking sites help boost business: expert
"Facebook, Instant Messenger and other online networking tools aren't mere workplace distractions — they improve the way we do business.Future Exploration Network chairman Ross Dawson says that a firm's success increasingly hinges on its ability to share knowledge and expertise both with its employees and external clients."

I understand there is a fair bit of media coverage yet to come – I’ll post here when I hear about it