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.
1. Ideas/Values/Culture
Enterprise 2.0 is not about the tools, it is about the culture. The change is about values, perceptions, participation and collaboration. The change is a move from a "Need To Know" approach to a "Need To Share" approach. Web 2.0 is a change in practice. Mind 2.0 is a change in world view and way of thinking. The rank and file has to shift attitudes and the way they work. Create an ongoing conversation across the enterprise. You don't have to know everything in advance. Let things emerge. Much of what is happening now relates to what was set out in the "Cluetrain Manifesto."
2. Technology
The SLATES formula captures the key technologies. These are Search, Links, Authorship (blogs), tags, extensions and signals (micro-blogging). These functionalities should ideally be tied together. The actual functionality of the platform for a given organization should be driven by the users. It is important to understand what users or categories of users are going to get out of the technology. Rapid prototyping processes will work better now. This means building quickly and iterating rapidly. It means having the flexibility to change on the fly after you introduce the technology into the field. It means obtaining feedback from users.
3. Micro-change actions (user interface)
In fostering adoption, subtly move people away from existing tools. Embed the action that you want people to take into the site. Add a social layer to existing tools. Make the social networking tools appear similar to the existing tools. For example, something might look like the Internet with an Edit button. Or place a button that says "tell me more" on each element. Email can become just one of the tools that leads to other places. Ask people to upload their picture, so that they will have buy-in. Users will not use things that do not meet their expectations for personal applications. Make adoption enjoyable.
4. Macro-change actions
Here are some best practices for successful adoption.
- Allow the challenges in the external environment to drive the change.
- Align the Enterprise 2.0 strategy to the business strategy.
- Develop a clear, simple business case.
- Gain and enlist top down support.
- Provide strong leadership.
- Involve stakeholders. Engage internal stakeholders in policy development. Involve all key stakeholder but go slow on this. Don't leave Legal out. Make Legal your partner at the beginning.
- Overcome turf issues in advance.
- Align applications to key business processes.
- Design measures aligned to business processes.
- Listen to users.
- Simplify the access to and production of knowledge.
- Develop a clear motivation plan.
- Develop a clear and integrated plan to promote the effort.
- Let customers drive the change. Talk to your customers. Establish two-way communication. Share basic information.
- Focus on quick wins but be strategic.
- Utilize "use cases" to gain adoption, especially transformational "use cases."
- Do a workflow process analysis to identify the pain points. For each step, ask: what is transferable to a social process.
- Get metrics beyond the simple act of taking part.
- Focus on cool people to gain their involvement and use. Then, get in touch with the motivations of second wave adopters.
- Provide continuity in the change process from the team in charge of implementation to the team in charge of maintenance. Have a role of "community manager" to be filled by one or several people to hear feedback among other responsibilities.
5. Ways People Work
- Enterprise 2.0 is about adopting new ways of working.
- It is about process improvement.
- Integrate the technologies more fully into the way people work. Users don't want to spend time on things not integrated into the workflow.
- You cannot apply a social tool over a silo.
- Tear down the wall between organization and customer. Humanize the organization.
- Use platforms and applications appropriately. Some are used for social networking, others for making decisions.
- Get people to engage in the workplace.
- Enable unknown knowledge of unknown people to become known.
6. The 21st Century Organization
- Figure out ways that people can be mindful of great conversations and capture these. Business is now a conversation so listen, learn and connect.
- It is all about making connections. Be able to find the right person and who that person links to. Tag and link content back to the existing community.
- Social messaging is a peripheral vision system. Use it to bring in what is going on around us. Reach all of the people who have great insights. Expand more that I know as an individual. Learn more about the context. Reach the larger ecosystem that we all work in.
- Generate new organization structures.
- Use social networking for collaboration. Focus on collaboration with partners, customers. Build our own collaborative pathways through the organization.
- Define areas where it is OK to share information.
- Cultivate weak ties through social messaging as well as strong ties. The weak ties are often the source of new insights vs. the people we talk to all the time.
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