Bridges To Knowledge: A Blog by Barry Camson

"Knowledge Is The Beginning"

 

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to witness an extraordinary program at Lincoln Center in New York City. This program illustrated how having a commonality in music and the shared experience of performing music can act as a bridge across differing cultures and political orientations. The Lincoln Center program was focused on an effort that has been going on to build understanding across Israeli and Palestinian cultures through the vehicle of a joint Israeli-Palestinian youth orchestra. During the movie, I felt that I was immersed in the experience along with all of the participants in the orchestra.

Open Government IS Cultural Change

I recently delivered a training program for the U.S. Intelligence Community on how to effectively transfer knowledge. This program was delivered during the period of time when the Intelligence Community was migrating from the Cold War mentality of "need to know" to the 21st century mentality of "need to share." 

Government as a whole is about to embark upon a similar change to that which the Intelligence Community encountered. This is as a result of the President's Memorandum on Open Government. The President's Memorandum calls for openness, participation and collaboration in government organizations. The culture of government organizations will have to change. This cultural change includes the behaviors, attitudes, assumptions, values and norms of these organizations. The President's Memorandum on Open government makes tangible what will be required for government to succeed in the future.

Implementing And Operating An Open Government Organization

The President's December 8, 2009 Memorandum on Open Government requires a new approach for many federal government organizations. It will impact the people, processes and technology of government offices. It will impact the work habits and behaviors of government employees.

For Open Government plans to be successfully implemented, cultural issues will also need to be addressed. The culture required to operate effectively with an Open Government approach may differ from the culture in a given agency or its various departments.

Based on my experience in working with organizations that have needed to implement new approaches and modify their cultures, I have identified seven questions that will help government organizations to implement Open Government plans.

Changing Business Models: Noticing The Winds Of Change

The way we do business and the business models that support this in the three important areas of health-care, law and higher education are undergoing significant change and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future. What was already a fast moving world has moved into hyperdrive due to the Internet and now the impact of social networking. This presents challenges for those of us who spend a good deal of time working to be successful in our day-to-day efforts.

Change Management: The Opera - What's Emotion Got To Do With It?

Recently, I found a question on one of my on-line groups inquiring about the emotional dimensions of change management for individuals and organizations. With the help of a famous opera, I want to respond to this question.

I recently listened to a recording of Puccini's "Tosca" (sung by Maria Callas) while reading the libretto. My insight from following this opera was that there are many emotions reflected in this opera through language, music and acting. These emotions are reflected serially and simultaneously. Just as a symphony intertwines a variety of themes and instruments, this opera intertwines a variety of emotions.

Respect - A Principle of Change Management Applicable to Enterprise 2.0

In a previous post, I set out "Seven Enduring Principles of Change Management Applicable to Enterprise 2.0." In this post, I would like to talk about "Respect" which is one of these principles. In the previous post, I suggested that it was important to "respect the existing people and system." For the purposes of this post, I would like to break this out into five different areas.

Seven Enduring Principles of Change Management Applicable to Enterprise 2.0

There have been a variety of valuable presentations, posts and conversations lately as a number of us have been considering what are sound approaches to help create wider Enterprise 2.0 use in organizations. These are conversations about what is generally called "change management." In these conversations, many of us are speaking about the Enterprise 2.0 tools as well as the ways of working and structuring work that support optimum use of these tools. These ways of working and structuring include increased participation and collaboration and flatter organizations to name just a few.

I have been involved in large-scale change projects for many years. In most of these efforts, there has been a focus on implementing state-of-the art technological tools as well as on how to create a high performing, more collaborative organization. These two goals have been seen as mutually supportive. This is pretty much in line with the goals we are speaking of for Enterprise 2.0.

I would like to set out what I believe are some enduring principles of change management that were value-adding in the past and which remain so today. Discussing these cannot be accomplished in a single post, so I will cover them over several posts. In this post, I will set out the overall principles.

These principle are:

1. Respect the existing people and system.
2. Utilize an encompassing approach.
3. Have a clear path forward.
4. Increase participation by enabling many people to contribute to the change effort.
5. Provide active, visible and sincere leadership support.
6. Seek deeper personal engagement.
7. Factor in contemporary models of change.

Some People Believe.......A Story of Enterprise 2.0 Adoption and Use

Some people believe that all that is necessary for successful Enterprise 2.0 adoption and use is for everything to be built into the technology, itself. Their view is that all of the issues of deployment and adoption can be addressed by how the technology is designed. They hold that an organization can be moved to be a more "Need To Share"-type organization by virtue of what is embedded in the technology.

Other people believe that technology is only the nuts and bolts and is limited in what it can accomplish by itself. These people hold that what most influences deployment, adoption and successful use are organizational changes to the processes, behaviors, configurations and the resulting culture.

Six Important Conversations To Have To Bridge The Enterprise 2.0 Cultural Gap

There appears to be a growing recognition that successfully dealing with cultural issues is a critical success factor in the deployment and adoption of Enterprise 2.0 tools and the changes in ways of working related to these tools. Many of the presenters at the recent Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston spoke of the importance of culture in Enterprise 2.0 deployment in organizations. A common comment was, "it's not about the tools, it's about the culture."

The change management challenge is to move the organization deploying Enterprise 2.0 tools from what may be a traditional, hierarchical, command and control culture to one that is less hierarchical, and more collaborative, agile, open and transparent - characteristics which are more congruent with Enterprise 2.0 tools.

Here are six conversations that I recommend occur in your organization that will help your organization bridge the cultural gap between the status quo and the organization as an effective user of Enterprise 2.0 tools. This builds on a previous post where I stated that "to optimize the technology and achieve improvements in organizational effectiveness...a focus on the overall organization is important."

Six Helpful Topics From The Enterprise 2.0 Conference

I attended the recent Enterprise 2.0 Conference held in Boston. There were a variety of excellent presentations and a lot to learn from the various vendor exhibits. As usual, I took extensive notes. A number of comments that I heard impacted me. I have rolled these comments up into six topics which I hope will be helpful to others.