Posted by Sean Lew on Saturday, 5 December, 2009 under Enterprise 2.0 |
First of all, I really enjoyed reading Andrew McAfee’s Enterprise 2.0 book. It concisely describes the problem at hand and provide four case studies to help illustrate his point. He went on to provide a strong definition of Enterprise 2.0 and what it consists of. Additionally, he provided some theoretical background to Enterprise 2.0 which I found extremely refreshing. Finally, he went on to describe in some detail how to succeed with Enterprise 2.0.
Enterprise 2.0 is something that is fairly new in the commercial and academic world. It is not a rocket science technology however, it brings together many past concepts and technologies like advance web technologies, collaboration concepts, knowledge management, social networking concepts, groupware technologies and many more under one technology platform. Additionally, Enterprise 2.0 adds new ways of doing things like freeform editing, self organisation, mobile integration and so on. Andrew McAfee did a very good job in summarising these tools and concepts into a book. I specifically like the chapter of “New approaches to old problems”
Probably being half an academic at heart, I found lacking in this book is the strong research data that could help substantiate some of his points. I guess Enterprise 2.0 being fairly new in this industry, there is a lack of research data in the field and I feel that research on the usage and development of Enterprise 2.0 over a period of time would provide very interesting insights.
I think this book is for anyone who is interested in Enterprise 2.0. For an expert in Enterprise 2.0, this book is a good summary of the concept. For your boss who doesn’t understand Enterprise 2.0, it would be a good starting point. Excellent read. Well done Andrew.
Posted by Sean Lew on Tuesday, 17 November, 2009 under Blue Sky Thinking |
I have been very passionate about this topic since I was young. It struck me when I was a five year old boy traveling to the depths of China and I experienced first hand what is the meaning of poverty and trying to survive in the cold, harsh winter. The people (especially kids) did not even had enough to eat, let alone study or learn a skill. I remember I had a chocolate bar and some lollies. I gave it to a kid and the smile on his face is just incredible.
I had a crazy idea a while back. I thought of building a computer community centre in the poorest areas of the world. This is based on a few concepts, one laptop per child, web 2.0 and IT outsourcing. The following are a few reasons why and how to deliver this idea.
1) Kids can learn from the best teachers around the world. One good example is MIT’s Open CourseWare. Something can also be worked out for the younger children. Its not easy to get quality teachers to these areas and instead of trying to get more teachers into these poor areas, why not bring the kids to the teachers?
2) Outsourcing has seen tremendous growth in the last decade and as we all know, there are many kinds of outsourcing. I was thinking that some of the low level tasks can be outsourced to the adults of these areas or work out an arrangement like the Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. It could even be that an organisation can “adopt a community” and train them to do the work necessary for that organisation?
By keeping people occupied, learning and producing something, they can make their own living. We must remember that many of the poorest people in the world do not even make a dollar a day. If they can make some money out of it, even $2 a day doing some monotonous work, it will really help the community to grow and develop into something better. I am not looking for a solution that can give them thousands a month, just something to help them along and progress.
I also understand that many of these people have never seen a computer before and I won’t blame anyone who is skeptical that people would not know how to use computers. Interesting enough, TechCrunch had a blog post about how children in India’s slums could work out computers without assistance and training extremely quickly.
Posted by Sean Lew on Thursday, 12 November, 2009 under Blue Sky Thinking, Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, IT strategy |
There has been alot of talk about creating enterprise 2.0 pilot test groups before a full fledged implementation across an organisation. However, I haven’t read much about how one can go about identifying teams that will succeed in the pilot test groups. So what are the requirements of an Enterprise 2.0 pilot test groups?
1) Must be tech savvy enough to know how to use the Enterprise 2.0 platform. This doesn’t necessary have to be the IT department.
2) Managers and team members involved have a history of collaborating with other teams/business units, i.e. helping other business units and contributing time and resources to support other business objectives other than their own.
3) High performing teams. These teams are very good at what they are supposed to do within their job scope and business objectives.
4) There are reasons and incentives for the teams to collaborate both internally within the team and external with other teams/suppliers and/or clients.
Do you think there are enough factors to select a team that will be highly effective and produce the right results in an Enterprise 2.0 pilot test group?
*Hint* think about this from a corporate level, if these are factors for a successful pilot team, what about a successful collaborative organisation?
Posted by Sean Lew on Friday, 6 November, 2009 under Blue Sky Thinking, Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0 |
When I first started researching Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0, I had the impression that its going to be really easy to implement a technology platform that can help enable Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 within an organisation. I was wrong.
As I discussed in my previous post, in every collaboration instance, the returns on collaboration must be greater than opportunity costs + collaboration costs.The cost involved in such an implementation is not just a social business software or purchasing some SaaS product online and get people to use it. I believe its more than that. In many large organisations, they do not have a central ERP, CRM, Data warehouse and so on. Enterprise 2.0 is not just about getting people to social network together or work on documents together or “tweet” each other. We need to strategically think about why we need employees to collaborate and share information.
Let me provide you with a simple case study. A large company with multiple units across the world would like to get two business units to collaborate to cross sell products to both business unit’s customers. Both business units have their own CRM and ERP systems running. A social business software was introduced hoping to achieve the benefits of Enterprise 2.0. It didn’t work. The following points were attributed to its failure:
1) Teams didn’t trust each other.
2) Performance review of teams was still focus on the individual business units. They were not judge on how effective the collaboration arrangement was
3) They didn’t had a common CRM system to track who did what to which customer. Data was inconsistent, errors were plentiful.
The above three points tells me there are three areas that needs to be targeted.
1) Change in organisational culture
2) Change in organisational performance management and structure.
3) Change in technology systems.
If you are an seasoned profession in the IT industry, you can roughly figure out that just accomplishing these three objectives will not be cheap and would take time.
Posted by Sean Lew on Thursday, 5 November, 2009 under Academic, Blue Sky Thinking, Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, IT strategy, Web 2.0 |
Generally, overdoing anything is not good. For example, humans have to drink water to survive, however, if one drinks way too much, the water would wash away the nutrients in the body and its bad for one’s health. Collaboration is the same. Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 technologies promotes collaboration across groups of people and there has been alot of buzz about it.
My experience with such implementation is that many leaders do not know when to collaborate and when not to. One classic example is when teams can’t decide on a specific problem or find the best route of advancement. I do not think the relationship works this way – the more people collaborating, the better result is achieved. Just like a 2 hour meeting with 20 people in the room is generally a waste of time. Leaders must target collaboration strategically.
Collaboration takes time and effort of employees and teams and this translates to opportunity cost. Employees from both sides of the team could have spend doing something more useful. The exact time spent on collaborating could be translated to a cost (based on salary of employees). Employers needs to ensure that employees are using their time effectively and help their organisation make money.
Collaboration between teams also cost money. There is a cost for the technology platform, telephone calls, traveling to other sites and so on. These costs should not be under estimated – small amounts can roll up to be a substantial amount.
Based on this, the returns of a collaboration arrangement between teams should be greater than the sum of opportunity costs + collaboration costs.
Returns on collaboration > opportunity costs + collaboration costs
If a collaboration arrangement does not fulfill this model, then it would be better to stay status quo or find another way to maximise the returns on other investments.
Posted by Sean Lew on Wednesday, 28 October, 2009 under Blue Sky Thinking, Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, IT strategy |
I have been thinking alot about how Enterprise 2.0 can be applied to politically intense environments. Let’s face it, to get global teams to work together is not the easiest thing. Not everyone share the same objective and in a highly competitive environment, it could be quite challenging. Some teams could think, why should I help in your division’s bottom line?
I will not discuss in detail game theory. However, it is widely known that game theory consist of five elements – Players, Added values, Rules, Tactics and Scope, PARTS in short.
Players
If there were a situation where two teams would not collaborate together, it could be wise to introduce another team to the collaborative platform or even changing one of the teams and replacing it with another team that is more interested. There is no point pushing and trying, if the team is not interested, it would be too much pain and effort to change the culture.
Added values
When two teams are collaborating and one slacks away, this could be sign that there is not enough incentive for the team that is slacking away. This calls for more added value to be provided to the team that is slacking away. For example, if a car product innovation team is collaborating with the tyre department and the product innovation team is just sucking information out of the tyre department and not contributing back, this would not provide any incentive for the tyre department to collaborate anymore. However, if the product innovation team is to provide feedback and ideas for the tyre department to improve on their operations, design and efficiency, this could improve the collaboration.
Rules
Within an organisation, rules could always be used to force people to collaborate. However, I have never been the sort of person who will try to force something down someone else’s throat.
Tactics
In Game Theory, tactics refer to changing the way players perceive the game and thus changing the way they compete. In the context of this post, an organisation could use other success stories within the organisation that has delivered high growth and efficiency and present it to teams who are against collaboration. Changing the perception of losing control and power and providing these teams with greater benefits could be a way to go.
Scope
Finally, scope refers to the boundary of the game. I have seen some team collaborate only on certain things and not others. By increasing (or decreasing) the scope of the collaboration, it could ultimately improve the net benefit of collaboration. The last thing management would want is to over collaborate and start discussing things that are not to the point and doesn’t provide any benefits to the organisation.
What do you think of the methods I have presented above? Is this something you would consider when performing Enterprise 2.0 change management?
Posted by Sean Lew on Sunday, 25 October, 2009 under General Ranting |
I have received my Amazon Kindle a few days back and I am totally in love with it. I read a fair bit of books and one of my biggest headache is what book should I bring on the road? I normally have two to three books that is in progress at any one point of time, 1) a business/management books 2) something technological 3) every other genre but generally biographies, interior design or history books. Whenever I travel I can’t seem to be able to decide what I feel like and even if I feel like something when I am packing, I might change my mind when I am at the destination. Normally, I just suck it up and read whatever I have which isn’t a bad thing. However, now I have an option. I have held back buying some books until I received my Kindle and I bought two books over the weekend. Its great. All the reviews of Amazon’s Kindle for the American version applies to the Australian version. For those Aussies who are interested, both the books I bought downloads just within 60 secs!
Alot of my friends asked me to wait for other ebook readers to be released. But after I checked out the price, it didn’t make sense to wait. Based on the two books I bought over the weekend, I save approximately $15 – $20 per book. Let’s say on average I save $20 per physical hardcover/paperback book (inclusive of shipping), for me to break-even the cost of my kindle, I will need to buy approximately 14 books. For me, 14 books will take me anything between 6 months to 9 months to read. However, if you check out the prices of other ebook readers, they are generally double the price of the Kindle and my break-even point will double as well. I think the Kindle is very well priced and despite some features that it lacks, I am sure for an average reader like me, its fit for purpose.
I totally recommend Kindle to anyone who reads a fair bit of books and you get magazines delivered to your kindle as well! Woo hoo!
Posted by Sean Lew on Saturday, 24 October, 2009 under Blue Sky Thinking, Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0 |
Enterprise 2.0 is a very interesting concept. It includes a large variety of tools like blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, microblogging, social networking sites and a whole lot of other stuff. Some also suggest that enterprise 2.0 is the usage of web 2.0 within organisations. However for someone who is not well read in the enterprise 2.0 literature, it could prove to be something quite overwhelming – let alone trying to convince organisations to buy into enterprise 2.0 technology.
Let’s forget about all the tools of Enterprise 2.0 for one moment. What are we trying to achieve with Enterprise 2.0? Innovation, communication, connecting people together, coordination and knowledge management are the few high level aims I can think of. However, all these can be sumed up easily into the concept of collaboration.
Collaboration is not about team building. Collaboration is about getting a whole organisation to work together and connecting teams with other teams within the organisation (read: connecting people together and communication). Collaboration is also about getting teams to work together to think about new ways to create new products and/or strategies to provide a sustainable future of an organisation (read: innovation). Collaboration is also about ensuring cross geographical teams to communication and achieve production goals efficiently and effectively (read: communication and coordination). With all these activities performed online, knowledge management and retention is achieved as a by-product of collaboration.
From the above, I would like to propose that Enterprise 2.0 is an organisational collaboration platform that aims to help organisations innovate, communication, connect and coordinate more efficiently and effectively.
What do you think?
Posted by Sean Lew on Wednesday, 21 October, 2009 under Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, IT strategy |
Enterprise 2.0 has never been about the technology. In simplistic terms, its just a web application and its not rocket science. The concept of getting groups of people to collaborate, share, communicate and connect however, is extremely powerful. The most difficult part about an Enterprise 2.0 implementation is change management. Good consulting firms can implement the technical aspects of an Enterprise 2.0 platform easily. I have done a few myself. However, getting people on board to use it is a long, tedious and complex process. This is where consulting firms comes in.
Consulting firms must be able to formulate a rigorous methodology to approach Enterprise 2.0 change management effectively. Potential areas that needs to be covered are like strategy, communication plan, C-level adoption, integration of current business process and many more. This is where consulting firms can make money as quite a substantial amount of time needs to be spent at the client side to work things through with the client. Consulting firms have a presence in many firms and that’s the best place to start.
Consulting firms should formulate a strategy, business plan, objectives and impact analysis of the Enterprise 2.0 platform for their clients. They can then do a technical product selection based on the requirements, implement the solution and move the change team into the organisation. Pilot teams could potentially start with the combined team between the consulting firm and the client, however, this could not be ideal depending on the situation and environment.
Selling Enterprise 2.0 to existing clients has a few benefits.
1) Since consulting firms have a presence within the client, there is a better understanding of the issues the client is facing and there are some levels of trust that is already established. Trust within a Enterprise 2.0 platform is critical for its success. Consultants can then show the client teams how to use it and demonstrate the many benefits of Enterprise 2.0.
2) With a presence within the client firm has another advantage where change consultants can act as champions and provide initial support for the clients.
3) Consultants on the ground also have the ability to identify areas where the platform needs to be modified and changed so that the platform constantly evolves to meet the client changing needs.
4) Lastly, when the implementation is successful, there will be greater rapport and trust built between the two parties.
Since Enterprise 2.0 is a rather new technology and concept within the organisational context, many clients do not understand what they can have and what they can’t. Many clients also do not know what and how to do stuff on the platform (i.e. when should I write a write a wiki page versus a blog?). I feel that that professional advice needs to be provided for the successful implementation of such projects. The last thing that should happen is the misuse of the platform (i.e. using the wiki as a document repository and a dumping ground). Consultants on the ground has the power to walk to most of the different scenarios that the client organisation is facing and tackle them one by one.
Posted by Sean Lew on Thursday, 15 October, 2009 under Academic, Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, Innovation, Speaking, Web 2.0, Wiki, software |
I just finished an introductory Enterprise 2.0 lecture with approximately 80 undergraduate students at The University of Melbourne. I asked a question to the class at the end of the lesson – Would prefer to work with an organisation with or without these tools?
The response were as follows:
1) An organisation with these tools – approx 75% of students raised their hands
2) An organisation without these tool – no one raised their hands
I guess just this simple 1 minute survey with the future of working generation says alot about what organisations need to do to improve their internal systems.
Anyway, the presentation as below:
