Posted by Sean Lew on Monday, 6 April, 2009 under Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, Innovation, IT strategy, social media |
Dean from Infovark wrote a very real and truthful story about “the empty wiki problem“. I can really related to everything he said. In a nut shell, Dean discussed a failed Wiki implementation and how to defeat the “empty wiki problem” –
“either decrease the individual effort needed to maintain the system, increase the value that each user gets from the system, or — ideally — do both things at the same time.”
Interesting enough, I had a chat with another Enterprise 2.0 enthusiast last night and he had a similar problem as well. This is my personal point of view on how one can increase adoption of Enterprise 2.0 should work.
1) Quick wins – solve immediate problems or pain points users are experiencing. Make them happy by making their life easier straight away.
2) Integrate the Wiki (or Enterprise 2.0 platform) into the current business processes and reduce any kinds of redundant work. Remember, if it means more work, it means it won’t work. Sharing and knowledge management will always take back seat when it comes to mission critical priorities.
3) Unless its three times better, its not better. I use this simple rule of thumb from a change management article I read previously. Also three times better should be measured according to what the user’s definition of “better” not the skewed understanding of anyone else.
4) Long term strategic benefits – the CEO, CFO, CIO needs to know Enterprise 2.0 will deliver value to their bottom line. May it be tangible or intangible, value should be somewhat measurable and there are abstract ways to do that. Remember, we are in business not in a playground. Anything that doesn’t directly or indirectly make more money or save some money will be canned and make sure stakeholders can see and understand that clearly.
Posted by Sean Lew on Tuesday, 10 March, 2009 under Blue Sky Thinking, books, Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, Innovation, IT strategy, 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 Thursday, 5 March, 2009 under Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, social media, Speaking, Web 2.0, Wiki |
Reposted from BearingPoint’s NewThinking Blog
There is a growing importance to use Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 concepts in human resources. Last week, I attended and presented at the Inspecht HR Futures Conference in Melbourne. The Inspecht HR Futures Conference brought together speakers covering all areas of HR, Recruiting and Technology to discuss how social media, innovation, culture and technology empower, attract, engage and evolve employees.
I presented how BearingPoint leverage Web 2.0 technologies to assist us in engaging our internal team members through the BearingPoint Wiki and shared some of my experiences and benefits using the tool in my day to day work. Following on, I explained how BearingPoint is reaching out to external information management experts through Mike2.0 where it provided us with an excellent platform to interact and discuss information management.
My presentation is below:
Posted by Sean Lew on Saturday, 28 February, 2009 under Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, social media, Speaking, Web 2.0, Wiki |
On Thursday, a few enterprise / web 2.0 enthusiasts / experts spoke at the Inspecht HR Futures Conference in Melbourne. It was a fantastic day with great discussions that went on from using Enterprise 2.0 to learn, professional development, usage of it in HR, general web 2.0 usage and Enterprise 2.0 for collaboration and knowledge sharing.
I had the luxury to meet some extremely smart people from around Australia and I had a great time discussing about Enterprise 2.0 in general. Kudos to Trib, WonderWebby, AnneBB, Joris and Matt from Atlassian. Thanks for the great presentations and wonderful discussions. (If you are wondering why some of the names are more like nicks, its because these are their twitterIDs)
I spoke about how BearingPoint used Wikis internally and externally, our approach and our results. I know some people are waiting for my presentation to be put online. Yes its coming. BearingPoint is putting it up on our corporate blog – NewThinking. Until then, hang in there. Below are slides from Trib and WonderWebby
Slides by Trib.
Slides by WonderWebby.
Posted by Sean Lew on Tuesday, 24 February, 2009 under Collaboration, Innovation, social media, Web 2.0, Wiki |
HBR List 2009 (See the Feb 2009 edition of Harvard Business Review for full details) is really interesting. HBR list is an annual list of breakthrough ideas for the year and ideas that would impact businesses. Out of the 20 ideas presented there were two ideas that is linked closely to social networks (How social networks network best; Harnessing social pressure) and another on semantic web (What you need to know about semantic web). Interesting enough, there were only 2 articles on the credit crisis. If you think Web 2.0 is small, think again.
I believe that most business leaders are really scratching their heads when it comes to social networking, collaboration, sharing, instant messengers, collective intelligence, wisdom of crowds and so on. On top of all these terms there are examples like facebook, digg, youtube, flickr and thousands of other examples to understand. My goodness, even when I have studied this for two years now, sometimes I still feel like its a word game and everyone has their own take on different terms.
Rising above the confusion of terms, look at it from the fundamentals – connecting people together will lead to communication, sharing and supporting each other – this what communities have done since early human existence. With all these communication and sharing done of the web, the information is stored and reusable. Web 2.0 at an extremely high level is that simple.
So to convert it to business sense at a high level as well would mean that if you can connect the most people together and get them communicate and share effectively that would mean the platform is successful. If search and reusing of information is easy for users then collective intelligence and knowledge sharing has been achieved.
Get into this really really cool phenomena. You’ll enjoy it.
Posted by Sean Lew on Thursday, 12 February, 2009 under General Ranting, social media, software |
BuzzGain is an online service for discovering and engaging with the people who will help your business thrive in today’s social economy – where attention is a precious commodity. It empowers businesses to identify the previously hidden communities who are actively defining and shaping its future, including blogs, Flickr, youtube, Twitter, and traditional media. (excerpt from here)
Well, people have been doing this for ages and now there is an integrated tool to monitor all the buzz from multiple locations. Pretty cool. (Thanks Jeremy for the Delicious link)
Okie to test if it really works, let’s see if BuzzGain would post a comment here. =)
Posted by Sean Lew on Wednesday, 11 February, 2009 under books, IT strategy, social media, Web 2.0 |
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 Tuesday, 3 February, 2009 under social media, Web 2.0 |
Pretty good slides on Business to Consumer Web 2.0 overview.
Posted by Sean Lew on Friday, 30 January, 2009 under Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, social media, Wiki |
I think Emiliano Pecis from Oracle has created some good use cases for Enterprise 2.0. Having said this, getting to this point is not only a technological advancement within organisations but also an advancement in the culture and attitudes within the organisation. Change management has to be done over time and monitored carefully. A large scale enterprise wide Enterprise 2.0 implementation could/might not be as expensive as compared to a SAP or Oracle type implementation in terms of software and customisation costs. However, the change management cost will be much higher.
Enjoy these slides. I think its great!
Posted by Sean Lew on Thursday, 29 January, 2009 under Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, social media |
Many have said that the implementation of Web 2.0 technologies in organisations (Enterprise 2.0) should be started bottom up and try to prove to the senior management that it’s a great tool and hopefully implement it across the organisation. What I have seen so far is that, this is seldom the case. I agree that this is good in theory but often doesn’t happen in practice. Senior management buy in is absolutely crucial.
If a Enterprise 2.0 platform started bottom up, likely it would be targeting a specific problem that department or business unit has. If proper planning and implementation concepts are used, it is likely that the tool would be fit for purpose and achieve its goals. Sad to say this will just be another tool that large corporations have in their IT software portfolio which could contain hundreds, if not, thousands of software titles. This will just be another point solution. Social networking and collaboration of Enterprise 2.0 requires the whole population to be involved, contributing and interacting on the virtual platform across teams and geographical solutions.
If a point solution approach is taken, it will not achieve the full benefit of Enterprise 2.0 and this would not only increase the transaction costs between parties in the organisation and also increase the ongoing software maintenance costs and licensing/support fees. Employees would have to interact over different point solutions to get to their objective (assuming there are multiple solutions for collaboration and knowledge sharing). In this event, the Enterprise 2.0 will become a liability to the organisation.
Bottom up approach is great – this shows that people who are executing daily chores wants to use it to help improve efficiency and productivity. However, once the senior management sees a change in attitudes, this is time for change. Conduct proper business analysis, business case, strategy and everything a good consulting company would do in a software implementation project and select the best tool for the organisation and decommission any old system that is not fit for purpose anymore.
Only this way can organisations achieve the benefits of Enterprise 2.0. As I said before, innovation at a departmental level will result in departmental results.
