Enterprise collaboration and innovation can be counter intuitive
I am playing devil’s advocate here.
I am proposing that an fully open slate enterprise collaboration platform can detrimental to the progress of an organisation. What I am saying is that, an organisation can’t just implement an Enterprise 2.0 platform and promote innovation across a large company and hope that it works. Below are some reasons why it doesn’t work well in a large company environment:
1) Sometimes, lower level employees do not get to see the full picture and even though the idea might be ideal in their perspective, it might not be optimal in the environment.
2) Lower level employess might not be revenue or profit driven. A good idea may not be bottom line friendly.
3) Country/region specific culture, attitudes, environment and work habits can interfere with innovation and collaboration. What works in one setting might not be applicable in another setting.
4) Cross departmental and boundaries collaboration and innovation can be very hard. Every team works differently and have their own view and attitudes towards new ideas. It will be all good if everyone was receptive and open to new changes and ideas – this is the ideal world that is hard to achieve.
What do you think? Are these valid?
Daria said,
These are totally valid. I haven’t tried to roll out E2.0 in a big company myself, but I talked to many people who did. There needs to be a cultural change. Not everybody in your company will be ready for innovation. They may be quite happy with the way they are doing things right now. I guess E2.0 software creators should remember about that and introduce more integration with popular software applications. For example, Wrike, the company I work for, believes that, if your people are used to sending emails you should let them do it. However, we try to solve the main problem: our tool lets you integrate your email communications with project management and project planning. People can create and update tasks as well as upload files via email. What do you think of this solution? Do you think that tight integration with existing systems might make it easier for new users at the team level to use the new technology?
Sean Lew said,
Absolutely. Tight integration is important. The last thing any employee in an organisation wants is to log on to multiple systems and replicating the same task multiple times to adhere with company standards. However, I also believe that software integration is only part of the solution. We need to look at the process and softer aspects of their daily workflows (think: Business process management) and also create a strong fit between process, software and culture (some might call it people, process, technology).
In an ideal situation, a platform (with multiple software supporting it) should look and feel like one tool to the users and the process should be well designed and implemented as one.
By the way, Wrike looks pretty cool. Will spend more time exploring it. Thanks!
Mary Adams said,
You have done a great job of laying out the challenges of managing today’s organization: diverse groups of knowledge workers of different ages, cultures, locations and perspectives.
But the answer is not top-down, one-size-fits-all solution. Nor is it ignoring the “ignorance” of lower level employees.
If knowledge workers haven’t internalized the strategy and business goals, you are leaving a lot of their value on the table. Enterprise 2.0 gives those at the top an enhanced communication channel but it has to be two way to fulfill its promise.
Sean Lew said,
Nice one Mary, I really like your statement on “If knowledge workers haven’t internalized the strategy and business goals, you are leaving a lot of their value on the table.” Yes – shared vision is one of the key success factors of Enterprise 2.0.
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