Posted by Sean Lew on Tuesday, 10 March, 2009 under Blue Sky Thinking, Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, IT strategy, Innovation, books, social media |
I’ve always heard people talk about culture and change management in Enterprise 2.0 and it is very important. However no one really discussed in detail what does is involved – at least I haven’t read any so far. There are a few factors that must be considered before implementing Enterprise 2.0 – social norms, obligations and expectations, trust, rules and recognition. I hope to cover one topic per post over the next few days.
Lets start with rules. 1) Rules have a strong impact on formal organisations with regards to the success of Enterprise 2.0. Decisions made at the top can change and influence network ties and the content of the communication across the organisation. Also within organisations there positions and hierarchy which will also affect the way people communicate and the content provided across any medium. Some may argue that organisations are becoming flatter but I am arguing that there are still very traditional and old school type organisations – lets not get into this.
2) Organisations can also influence the norms and beliefs which will in turn affect the success and failure of Enterprise 2.0. For example, if in a traditional firm, innovation is frowned upon (read as authoritarian), it would be unlikely that people would suggest new ways of doing things. Or if an organisation, removes some redundant hierarchy within the organisation and creates a more accessible path to the top, it would increase the chances of people interacting more efficiently.
Rules can be a detriment or enabler for Enterprise 2.0. Make sure you know how to use it well.
Posted by Sean Lew on Wednesday, 18 February, 2009 under IT strategy, books |
I have just read Kaplan and Norton’s – The Execution Premium. This book is an extension of their previous books Balanced Scorecard and Strategy maps. This book provides a great overview of how to manage the organisational management life cycle from strategy to operations. It is broken down into six key steps as shown below.
Image by http://www.thepalladiumgroup.com/
By looking at the diagram, enterprise 2.0 fits in two ways.
1) Use the execution premium to manage an Enterprise 2.0 project / initiative. This is pretty straight forward. Follow the steps outlined in the book.
2) Within your organisational strategy and operations, you can use it to identify your pain points and figure out how Enterprise 2.0 could help.
I really recommend everyone to read this book. However, before you start, you should have a good understanding of balanced scorecard and strategy maps.
Posted by Sean Lew on Wednesday, 11 February, 2009 under IT strategy, Web 2.0, books, social media |
I bought this book last year shortly after it was released to the public from Book Depository (which is like 1/2 to 1/3 the price of what is sold at the local Borders). I did not have the chance to read this until last week. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. Its an excellent read.
Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. Buy it here.
When I first saw the title, I was thinking – “Excellent word to use to describe social media and Web 2.0 technologies.” Anyway, for those who are new in this space, the authors defined Groundswell as a social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other rather than from traditional institutions like corporations.
This book is mainly about how organisations can use the power of social technologies to help organisations achieve their goals. It maps out high level strategies for organisations to folllow and a generic step by step guide to achieving it. This book uses some excellent case studies and uses it well to support their argument. They have leveraged Forrester’s research well and incorporated some good statistics into the book. This is a welcoming change as many results about social media and web 2.0 are still in the form of case studies. Another really nice thing about the book is that it has presented ROI calculations of various technologies a few times and it clearly presented their case extremely well.
This book was focused mainly on Business to Consumer type web 2.0 relationship but it also briefly touched on groundswell within the organisation (internal groundswell).
I would totally recommend this book to anyone who is interested to find out how Web 2.0 can help to communicate, connect and innovate with your customers and how the changing face of corporate marketing.
Posted by Sean Lew on Monday, 29 September, 2008 under IT strategy, books |
I have recently finished reading “The IT Value Stack: A Boardroom Guide to IT Leadership” by Ade McCormack. I must say its one of my best read this year.
First of all, the book proposes a IT value stack (duh) and describes each of the component of the model in detail. Each chapter (other than intro and conclusion) starts of with a description of the topic/component that is being discussed, why is it not done in organisation and how can you make it happen. It is then followed by commentary from various business/IT leaders from various organisations. This is a fantastic structure – not only it is clear, and is broken down into bite size components for readers to digest, the commentary ensures that what he is talking about is NOT bullcrap. Many of such books are “blue sky thinking” (i.e. semi baseless discussions) but he has managed to make it relevant by providing insights and comments from various business leaders.
The content of the book gets even better. It provides a great blend of business and IT issues and describes it in detail. Being an IT consultant, I have to be both technically and business focus and this book teaches me many of the different perspective business leaders have and also what the IT department is thinking/doing and the challenges that faces each party. The solutions provided, even though high level, provides an excellent grounding for your endeavor and the rest is up to you.
I highly recommend this book to any one who wishes to understand what the IT department is doing. They are no longer a “black box” department but a team, if properly managed, could deliver competitive advantage.
Posted by Sean Lew on Friday, 4 July, 2008 under Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, IT strategy, Wiki, books, software |
Previously, I conducted an experiment and it didn’t work out very well. I have since started another experiment at the request of a close friend.
Let me tell you abit more about this. I wanted to increase collaboration among two different teams across two geographical locations. It is not possible for these teams to have regular face to face meetings and they are both working on the same thing.
So I encouraged everyone on the team to get onto a Wiki, pre-populated the Wiki with some important information and structure. When the team first logon, they commented they wanted this and that and I accomodated the requests accordingly. As 90% of the team has never contributed to the Wiki before, I spent 10 mins explaining to concept of the Wiki and “best practices” to them. I did not enforce any rules on the wiki and let them do whatever they wanted.
The outcome was the total opposite of what happened previously. Everyone started playing with it first and one senior staff said “its easier than I thought”. Within a day, everyone on the team was contributing their part of the puzzle to the Wiki. What I found was that different people used it differently. Some was commenting alot, some were uploading their completed Word files to the wiki and using it as a document repository, some were afraid of commenting on the wiki and sent comments via email. I must say these are not best practices for sure. However, I am not too bothered – at these they are using it.
I was invited to re-educated them again. I reiterated the same story I told them on the first meeting and more questions arose (mainly conceptual and technical questions). Most of them were much more attentive and the meeting was more interactive as well. They were hooked for sure. Its been a while now and EVERYONE loves it. I get emails of satisfaction for implementing this for them.
Just for everyone’s curiosity, 1/2 the team were baby boomers! This time round, I got the technology right as well!
Posted by Sean Lew on Sunday, 11 May, 2008 under General Ranting, books |
Have you ever wondered how much data can your brain hold in bytes? I just did while lazing in bed (and yes I hear you say “Geek”). I didn’t have the answer but Google return this and this. I do not have much understanding of everything but somewhere did say something like 3 terabytes.
A silly Saturday arvo rant. =)
Posted by Sean Lew on Sunday, 6 April, 2008 under Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0, books |
I have just finished reading Wikinomics and I must say its a truly fantastic book. The main focus is on collaboration and it goes into detail about how collaboration can work with your customers, your suppliers, the general public, the world and most importantly, within your own organisation. This book provides alot of examples and strong cases of evidence of how collaboration can work. However if you are looking for a 3 step answer to successful collaboration, go somewhere else and before you go, let me say “good luck”.
The authors provided some guidelines to implementing the different aspects of collaboration and I must say that they are guidelines only. As every company’s structure, culture, environment and capability is different, different approaches needs to be taken. This book has provided me with a better understanding and heaps more examples I can take with me to my clients. =)
Posted by Sean Lew on Friday, 28 March, 2008 under General Ranting, IT strategy, books |
I am currently halfway through this book and I must say that this is extremely insightful for people who are in the consulting industry. Even though I am an IT consultant, I feel that this book is target for any kind of consultant. Its about problem solving skills and the method to go about solving an complicated and complex problem. It studies ex-Mckinsey consultants and survey them on the way a Mckinsey consultant operates.
I have gone through advanced academic research and found alot of the ideas present is very similar however with a business twist to it. For example, academic research is really about getting the stats and the information spot on. However, its written in the Mckinsey Mind that ballpark figures can be accepted. Everything makes alot of sense and it really helped me apply my academic research skills to business research and problem solving.
I do recommend this book to anyone who wishes to advance their business problem solving skills at a high level.
Posted by Sean Lew on Friday, 21 March, 2008 under General Ranting, books |
Below are some of the books I just bought over the last couple of days from BookDepository – Free shipping worldwide and the books are roughly about half the price of what I pay in Australia after exchange rate conversion!
Sorry I can’t give any reviews on the books at the moment but once I am done, when I am done, I will post something.
1) Freakonomics - A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
2) Naked Finance: Business Finance Pure and Simple
3) Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant
4) Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning
