Surrounded by really smart, disciplined business thinkers, Enterprise 2.0 Summit Paris February 7-8 2012 was the place to be.
The important conversations were not about the abundant technology platforms vying for "Enterprise 2.0" supremacy, but their business impact when effectively implemented to enable collaboration in support of business strategy.
Other #e20s attendees have captured meeting highlights including Emanuelle Quintarelli, Ana Silva, Anthony Poncier Samuel Driessen, and Jon Ingham. For complete coverage explore Jim Worth's wiki resources
This reflection narrows to my take aways (fuelled especially by Jerome Colombe, Alcatel-Lucent; Rawn Shah and Luis Suarez IBM; Yves Caseau; Richard Collin; Cordelia Kroos, Anthony Poncier and Mark Masterson) around the people, mindsets and talents required to transform organizations to value creating collaboration.
A. Alcatel-Lucent- An Implementation Approach to Follow
Coinciding with Enterprise 2.0 Summit in Paris, the U.S. based Information Week carried a cover story designed to capture attention with the headline "Enterprise Social Networks: Dislike".
Clearly the 62% of companies reporting dissatisfaction with their internal social networks were not applying the strategic business planning with senior executive support to their initiatives that Jerome Colombe is practicing with Alcatel-Lucent’s “Engage” platform. The mission is clear: enable CEO Ben Vermayen's mandate that employees "Share", a practice Vermayen models by active participation.
See the presentation on Slideshare and especially slide 6 "Interactions with Users and Communities". The slide points to a participation dynamics analysis project Bell Labs (part of Alcatel-Lucent) is undertaking to understand levels and types of employee engagement as a foundation for future development. Also note the array of Jerome's responsibilities as "Head of Web Governance - Corporate Marketing, Strategy & Communications".
B. IBM- Wisdom in Deep Collaboration Roots
Listening to IBM representatives Rawn Shah, Luis Suarez and Stefano Pogliano it seemed helpful to consider the path IBM has taken to reach Enterprise 2.0 thought leadership.
Consider that IBM is a 100 year old technology company that has both invented the collaboration tools and methods used internally, and that fuel business in client companies worldwide. Noteworthy is that IBM’s enterprise knowledge sharing expertise is 5 decades old, having started (I’m told) with mainframe systems in the 1960's and PROFS notes in the 1980's.
IBM is also a company that:
i) Allowed Valdis Krebs to investigate knowledge flows in groups using “Organizational Network Analysis” (ONA) in the mid 1990's (so named as executives refused the approach when labelled “Social” Network analysis as business irrelevant)
ii) Sponsored research through the IBM Institute for Business Value that resulted in a 2004 book "Creating Value with Knowledge" with an opening chapter "How to Invest in Social Capital"
iii) Has a decade's experience bringing employees, customers and thought leaders together at scale through "Jams" to problem solve and identify new business possibilities.
iv) Invests in research to understand collaboration and social networking dynamics
and funds a Social Business Reseach Center
IBM's 50 year journey points to the choreography of technology use, sharing and co-creation mindsets, and organizational structuring that underpin Rawn Shah's slides and Stephen Pogliano’s blog post “Business: It’s all about People”.
C. Yves Caseau, Executive Vice-President, Bouygues Telecom
At Bouygues Telecom’s Dr. Yves Caseau is responsible for “Technologies, Services and Innovation” but his presentation focused on organization theory, social networks,
CMC (computer-mediated communication) and information flows.
Dr. Caseau’s talk put front and center the management paradigm shift required for business in a complex 21st century. where communication and collaboration, diverse skills, viewpoints and teamwork are required to innovate and solve problems "on the gemba" where they occur, at speed leveraging the strong and weak ties in networked enterprises.
Citing sources from the Harvard Business Review “Complexity” edition to Henry Mintzberg and Duncan Watts, Caseau challenged thinking about leadership and ‘lean” Enterprise 2.0 organization structures for 21st century success.
D. Cordelia Kroos, Senior Community Manager for Enterprise 2.0 Platform, BASF
Dion Hinchcliffe has captured the work behind the success of Connect BASF that Cordelia Kroos oversees. A highlight of Cordelia's presentation for me is the human capital forethought, ensuring the talent is at hand to scale Connect.BASF as the platform becomes increasingly integral to business operations.
I didn't hear talent issues discussed in Paris, but in my experience growing enterprise collaboration (both among employees and externally to engage customers, partners and thought leaders) raises the bar on every employee's skills to communicate and share. And to manage these environments demands highly talented "Whole New Mind' people who can lead, communicate to engage while also assembling business cases and managing the analytics required to drive success and prove business value.
E. Anthony Poncier’s HR Challenge and Richad Collin’s “Senses” & 10 Commandments
In Paris Anthony Poncier was determined about the need for HR to "implement the new collaborative work mindset". Companies are moving forward without HR's contribution but if HR is to remain relevant it's time to act. And it is a new mindset as Richard Collin articulated in listing the “senses” at the heart of Management 2.0:
"Courage, Energy, “Hybridite”, Multitasking, Diversity, Desire, Respect, Listening, Intuition"
along with proposing 10 Commandments for how to proceed:
Mark Masterson’s presence asking the tough questions kept us grounded in what it takes to translate the promise of social networking platform openness and sharing into practice in organizations, especially when it comes to transforming leadership.
The Paris meeting coincided with the MIT Sloan Review interviewing Andrew McAfee (creator of the “Enterprise 2.0” term), to mark 6 years since publication of his ground breaking article “Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration”.
Titled “What Sells CEOs on Social Networking” it is recommended reading as a reminder of what distinguishes Web 2.0 tools from Web 1.0 and the impact on doing business the greater openness and connectedness they enable, if leaders support the possibilities.
As a post script to Paris meeting conversations 6 years on McAfee routinely fields senior executive "Enterprise 2.0" objections and questions about impact and “where is the value?”
~ Jenny Ambrozek
