enterprise 2.0 – Page 2 – Agile Elephant making sense of digital transformation

October 15, 2014 By David Terrar

Jon Ingham on the state of social business in the UK – #e20s interview series

This is the next in a series of posts which present different views on the state of Social Business in the UK from a video interview series compiled by our friends at Kongress Media. Around our #e20s Meetup sessions Bjoern Negelmann asked well known consultants, practitioners and thought leaders in this space where we are with digital and social collaboration compared to the rest of Europe and elsewhere.

Here is Jon Ingham. Jon’s a well know human resources and human capital management expert who has been blogging around the topic since 2007, and before that authored Strategic Human Capital Management: Creating Value Through People. Our paths have been crossing regularly in the social media, social business and digital workplace space and so we were delighted to get his viewpoint.

Watch the video, but here are some highlights:

very positive, very dynamic

I feel, in one way, that we talk less about social business than we perhaps we were a few years ago

but there are more social businesses around – there are more organisations that know their sucesss depends on being social, doing collaboration, bringing their people together

HR is very much at the heart of creating that type of organisation

I still think the main driver tends to be technology, the move to digital, the move to mobile

I think that tends to be the wrong the idea – we were talking about 5 years ago that we could bring social technology in to the organisation and experiment, about using wikis and different things, and that would help me become more social – I think that’s largely been disapproved

the attempt to introduce social in to process, in the workflow – I don’t think that’s getting there either

I think what works is being a social business, introducing social in to the culture

but that’s not what it’s about, the driver is to improve the effectiveness of the organisation, the collaboration of the people, the connectedness of all of the people across departments, across functions – when the driver is that social business works more effectively

HR people who really do understand the power of the culture, how engagement can be shaped, how collaboration can be enhanced and doing terrific things in this area

but are also involved in organisation design, team design, organisation development, reward policies that ensure everybody is collaborating, in reshaping their performance management

a lot going on and I’m very proud of what we accomplish in HR

I would appoint HR as the head of that effort

I’m biased as I work mainly with HR… …a lot of HR people understand what social business is all about… … but (some of) their CEOs don’t get the plot

If you want to find out more and about what works, what doesn’t and what next then take a look at the Enterprise 2.0 Summit London on November 26. More information here.

More #e20s state of UK social business interviews in the series here.

October 14, 2014 By David Terrar

Jon Mell on the state of social business in the UK – #e20s interview series

Here is Jon Mell. Jon and I first met when we were both speaking at the International Forum on Enterprise 2.0 in Varese in Italy back in 2008. He was in IBM, after that leading sales for Headshift, before going back to IBM to be their Social Business Leader UK and Ireland. Back in February Jon was keynoting at the Paris edition of the Enterprise 2.0 Summit. He’s a social collaboration expert who has been around in this space for a long time and brings a practical perspective to using social to drive business.

Watch the video, but here are some highlights:

I think it’s going pretty well

companies aren’t thinking of it necessarily in terms of social, they’re thinking in terms how do they improve their customer care process, how do they get products to market more quickly, how are they looking at recruiting and on-boarding new talent and they’re looking at social as a way to do that

they’re not looking at social as something in its own right

I don’t think they’re necessarily concious that they’re even thinking about social business

when an organisation looks at how do they attract the right talent, how do we break down silos and barriers in our organisation they’re thinking about solving those problems, they might use social to do it but they aren’t waking up in the morning and thinking “I want to collaborate using social business”

how can they get closer to their customers, how can the be more valuable in their marketplace and they’re looking at social as a way of doing that

we’re seeing a lot of interest from internal communications, we’re seeing a lot of interest from CHROs, but also lines of business, heads of sales, heads of R&D

how can I increase the innovation pipeline and get new products to market more quickly

seeing smaller companies get involved, using social as a way to punch above their weight

If you want to find out more and about what works, what doesn’t and what next then take a look at the Enterprise 2.0 Summit London on November 26. More information here.

More #e20s state of UK social business interviews in the series here.

October 13, 2014 By David Terrar

Lee Bryant on the state of social business in the UK – #e20s interview series

Here is Lee Bryant. Lee was one of the pioneers of using social tools inside the enterprise in the UK, starting Headshift way back in 2002, well before people were talking social business consultancy or digital transformation. Over the years we’ve supported each other’s events from London Wiki Wednesdays to SOMESSO (which used to be a conference) to the Dachis Business Summit. Headshift was acquired by Dachis Group in 2009, became Dachis Group London, but then Lee and Livio Hughes rebooted with Postshift, a foundry for new business structures, a consultancy and a place for learning in 2013. Lee will be contributing and running a workshop session at the Enterprise 2.0 Summit London.

Watch the video, but here are some highlights:

in an interesting place

a lot of companies have gone through the phase of building a platform or putting a platform in place and beginning to see a little spike of collaboration and sharing

many of them have got to the point where they’re asking what that’s for and maybe in some cases lost a little bit of purpose and so they’re starting to ask questions about organizational transformation and what comes next, you know how do we make this more business relevant?

many of these projects began with CIOs or IT departments, but I think now they’re being owned more by the organisation so we are seeing more communications leads, more HR leads, more knowledge leads

and also executives, which is the really important thing, are starting to take over these projects and to try and define their purpose for the future

interesting times!

gone past the initial excitement, just beginning the next phase which is about what is the impact on the organisation, how does this really improve the business, and how does this change the way we’re organised and structure?

people are tempted to link them to business objectives

but we are zooming out now to look at the wider impact on the organisation and that’s what makes it really interesting… …in terms of business purpose

OD and HR are starting to understand they have some some skills and some experience that could really help push this forward, but I think it’s still in the realm of enlightened executives

where we are seeing real change, it’s enlightened leaders who are leading that

digital transformation is probably the overall goal

you need a base of a more socially connected organisation on the inside

If you want to find out more and about what works, what doesn’t and what next then take a look at the Enterprise 2.0 Summit London on November 26. Lee will be on an expert panel and running a workshop session called “Building the next generation organizational chart”. More information here.

More #e20s state of UK social business interviews in the series here.

October 12, 2014 By David Terrar

Benjamin Ellis on the state of social business in the UK – #e20s interview series

This is the next in a series of posts which present different views on the state of Social Business in the UK from a video interview series compiled by our friends at Kongress Media. At our #e20s Meetup sessions Bjoern Negelmann asked well known consultants, practitioners and thought leaders in this space where we are with digital and social collaboration compared to the rest of Europe and elsewhere.

Here is Benjamin Ellis. We’ve known Benjamin from the London start-up, social media and social business scene (OpenCoffee, Tuttle Club, etc.) for around 10 years. Benjamin, like us, is on Microsoft’s list of leading social business influencers for the UK, and runs two businesses – Redcatco which develops, builds and delivers social technology solutions for business, and SocialOptic which provides provide SaaS and Cloud-based applications and in particular Milestone Planner, a combined cloud/social/mobile approach to planning which gives you a new way to agree, track, and manage who does what, by when on a project.

Watch the video, but here are some highlights:

at a particularly interesting time right because the early adopters of social media technology are quite mature and starting to think about what’s the next step for them

at the same the bigger majority of businesses are now just getting kick started with their projects so you’ve got this dynamic of one set of people looking at what is the second generation of what they do with these tools, and whole other set of business saying we’re just starting off, what can we learn from what those other businesses have done?

first group were more entrepreneurial, tended to experiment, try social t0ols in certain areas of the business before rolling it out across the whole organisation, and so experiment and pivot and learn

some of them have been through multiple tools already

people starting with their first adoption are much more structured, and they’re really looking to deploy across the whole of the organisation, and they tend to have settled on one tool… …so quite different approaches

more of an uphill push to get people using the tools and incorporating them in their business process

interesting thing about organisation change is that it is a phenomenally slow process and you have to be realistic about that

talking to the CEOs they talk about 5 years, 7 years sometimes even 10 years

we can deploy a Software as a Service tool within minutes or weeks but the change in business culture, you’ve really got to allow time for that

the interesting thing for me is that you can use social tools to change the culture, so a combination of change of culture and using the tools to accelerate that change

If you want to find out more and about what works, what doesn’t and what next then take a look at the Enterprise 2.0 Summit London on November 26. Benjamin will be one of our panel speakers. More information here.

More #e20s state of UK social business interviews in the series here.

October 9, 2014 By David Terrar

Luis Suarez on the state of social business in the UK – #e20s interview series

This is the first in a series of posts which present different views on the state of Social Business in the UK from a video interview series compiled by our friends at Kongress Media. At our #e20s Meetup sessions Bjoern Negelmann asked well known consultants, practitioners and thought leaders in this space where we are with digital and social collaboration compared to the rest of Europe and elsewhere.

Here is Luis Suarez, well known for being the IBM champion of social collaboration and knowledge sharing, who lives “outside of the inbox“! Luis made the break from IBM just a few months ago and is working as an independent consultant and change agent.

Watch the video, but here are some highlights:

I’m taking for granted that digital transformation is happening across the board

Technology is driving innovation. It’s happening, but it’s not why, but how we do it in way that matters for my business!

We’re spending a disprotionate amount of time talking, not enough time doing.

The UK market is realising their clients ar not restricted geagraphically – we can get to Europe, the USA and emerging markets… …the UK has more a leading role to play

It’s happening all over, even the traditional world of government is back in the game digitising the conversation.

Not questioning why, but doing, diving in and learning

If government is doing it, what’s your excuse?

The rest of the countries in Europe may be saying we’re not ready

We might not be ready to kill the hierarchy but we need to challenge the status quo

10 years ago no-one was questioning the hierarchy. Can we flatten (our organisations) and change?

It’s’ going to a gradual transition to a more flat world, but both will exist for a long time.

If you want to find out more and about what works, what doesn’t and what next then take a look at the Enterprise 2.0 Summit London on November 26. More information here.

More #e20s state of UK social business interviews in the series here.

October 8, 2014 By David Terrar

Dealing with Digital Disruption

Riding the Digital Enterprise Wave

Your business model is under threat from what we call the Digital Enterprise Wave. Are you going to ride it or go under?

The digital enterprise wave from David Terrar

Take a look at these slides and let me explain how the business landscape is changing. It’s driven by significant changes in infrastructure and things that we already know about. There are Global economic pressures where access to low wage costs in Asia, Eastern Europe, or South America are facilitating outsourcing and offshoring, all supported by the connectivity provided by the Internet, extended by the huge rise in Wi-Fi access, 3G and 4G so that we now live in an “always on” World. Those things have dramatically lowered the costs and barrier to entry for any business start-up idea. It’s fostering an explosion in entrepreneurship. It’s enabling crowd-sourcing of expertise from Wikipedia to Waze. It’s giving us a new generation of Millennials who have grown up digital so that they think differently, communicate and multi-task in ways that are changing the expectations of the (digital) workplace forever. These are the factors that underpin the ideas in Thomas L. Friedman’s The World is Flat, or that facilitate the access to niche markets behind Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail, or give us Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody. These factors form the foundation of the wave.

Next we have the Big Shift. For the last 50 years Moore’s Law has driven change and innovation in technology. Every 5-10 years we’ve had a major technology disruption that has changed the way we do business, created new companies, and seen the demise of others. We moved from the mainframe to the minicomputer, and then to the advent of the IBM PC back in 1981. We’ve networked computers and created the era of client/server applications and then seen the start of the Internet, web 1.0 and the Dot-com boom and bust. Then things started to get interactive with Web 2.0. However, we’ve never had more than one technology disruption happening at once, until now. Now we have three major technology disruptions happening simultaneously, and that’s never happened before. The shift to the Cloud and web apps is happening at the same time as the shift to social media where all markets are conversations, and that’s happening at the same time as the shift to mobile – smart-phones and tablets mean that most of us are carrying around the Internet in our hands. That Big Shift is the next layer of the wave.

Then on top of that there are emerging technologies like the Internet of Things, Big Data & Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and 3D Printing. Each one of these has the potential for an even more profound effect on the World economy, the global supply chain and the way business works. Today’s marketplace has more demanding customers, faster changing technology and more competition than ever before, and the rate of change is getting faster. These emerging technologies form the top of the wave. Whatever business you are in your business model is under threat by a smarter, nimbler competitor who will be using technology to skip past you in to a new field of play.

The problem is that most companies are too focused on the day to day. They think business as usual. They have legacy business systems, with tired old style user interfaces – systems of record that keep score for the business. There is often a lack of integration. Where social media initiatives or communities have been started, using the new web tools, they slide over the top of existing systems rather than connect properly. They’re alternatives to email for communication instead of changing the game. They are point solutions or provide siloed information, when you need to think in a holistic way about the business. Business as usual will get swamped by the wave.

To ride the wave we need think differently. We need to think “digitally”. We need design thinking and business model innovation. We need to create systems of engagement which connect and engage with our customers and partners. We need to think in terms of using digital and social tools outside, but more importantly inside our businesses to create the connected digital workplace and a new way of working. Digital thinking will help you ride the wave, but it has to be applied to the whole business. We use the McKinsey 7 “S” framework to look at every aspect of the business – it doesn’t matter so much which framework and approach you use, as long as you think beyond just “putting lipstick on a pig” with a dash of digital and social sitting on top of your “business as usual”.

We’re now moving to an “Everything as a Service” World where companies like AirBnB are changing the hotel industry, Uber is changing the taxi business and Apple is about to change the card payment industry. As I said before, I don’t care who you are and what business you are in, your business model is under threat and you need to be using tools like the Business Model Canvas and the Value Proposition Canvas to rethink and refocus what it is that you do.

We are talking Digital Transformation – what is that?

You will have noticed that companies that have been talking social media in business, or enterprise 2.0 or social business have just started to talk digital instead. Social collaboration tools and platforms are an important component that you might use in your evolution or transformation to doing better business. By using the term digital we are highlighting that you need to think further than just adding social and mobile technologies on top of your legacy systems. You have to harness your existing technology, those systems of record, and make them work better. You have to think of using technology to help you go to market faster with new offerings and to reach your customers in new ways. You have to re-evaluate your business and your value proposition and stop thinking business as usual. You have to start thinking “digitally” for your business and an entire new generation of technologies as well as looking at the culture of the way your company communicates and interacts. You don’t have to change your company structure, but you do have to recognise that we now live in a networked World where every person in your organisation can be involved and engaged in the same way that they connect with brands in their personal lives. Smart companies can evolve a digital strategy. Business as usual will get left behind. If you are behind the curve like a Kodak or Blockbuster or even a Phones 4U, you have to think in terms of a more significant digital transformation. But going digital to survive is a given.

Sounds quite interesting, but why bother?

If this still sounds nice to have as an add-on rather than vital, the most important thing is that it works! Take a look at these survey results from Capgemini Consulting and MIT Sloan Management from their report “How digital leaders outperform their peers in every industry“. They split the surveyed organisations in to 4 categories, with the most digitally savvy being called the “Digirati”. Companies in that most advanced category generate 9% more revenue, create 26% more profit and have 12% higher market valuation than the rest. Going Digital makes a direct contribution to the bottom line.

This post was first published on diginomica.com as Riding the Digital Enterprise Wave

September 29, 2014 By Alan Patrick

Social Business – Europe vs UK

We attended the IoM conference in Cologne last week, at the same time London Social Media Week was happening. (David gave a keynote talk, the slides are over here). It was interesting to juxtapose the core themes of these 2 events (incidentally, it was our Patchwork Elephant Conference held during last year’s Social Media Week London that persuaded us to set up Agile Elephant).

In a nutshell, I noted the following large differences in themes on my twtstreams:

In Europe, a large amount of the case studies are based around improving operations, all over the business.
In the UK, most of the focus is on customer attraction – marketing, lead generation and sales.
Where the UK is looking at operation improvement, it tends to be around customer facing operations, typically serving existing customers.

Now to be fair, IoM is about “social business” whereas “Social Media Week” has a wider remit, but it’s interesting to note that even “Social Business” conferences in the UK are often focussed much more heavily on the sales/marketing arena. (Which is why we are running a more operations & customer related conference in November – see last paragraph of this post)

When we were kicking around the “why” this might be so, we came to the following hypotheses:

The UK has a more mercantile industry structure, but Europe has retained a lot more of its manufacturing industry – so by definition there are more European companies interested in operations improvement.
It is very likely that the CXO power base area is different – UK companies tend more often to be run by ex salesmen or accountants, European by ex operations people – the path to the CEO office usually tells you where the major power in the organisation lies, so its more likely that new projects in these areas are seen as priorities.
It may be cultural as well – in the UK my observation over many years’ consulting is the culture is more “sell it first, we’ll work out how to deliver it then” than European comapnies. As one delegate at IoM told us, to not have its operational side ticking along like a well made clock is painful for for a Germanic or Nordic company.

Whetever the reasoning, it leads to an interesting conclusion – best practice on customer attraction areas is in our observation coming from the UK and US, best practice in operational areas from Europe. Customer service examples seem to be coming from everywhere (it was after all a Swede who invented the concept of Moments of Truth in the customer value chain).

On implementation of social business projects, it seems that the same lessons are being laerned no matter where you are in the world, in that:

Projects should address an area of real business need
Pilot first
Use enthusiasts from the Pilot process to help spread the new system
Nothing will take off easily without CXO involvement
Nothing will scale easily without IT involvement
These projects put pressure on existing organisation structures, so education, and careful and sensitive change management is required.

There is a lot of discusion about what future organisation structures could or should be, in the UK and Europe, but after speaking to Jane McConnell, who has done quite a lot of research on this issue, I am increasingly coming to the conclusion that it’s more the culture than the structure or anything else that make the major difference in an organisation. As one person noted at IoM, “Culture eats Strategy for breakfast” (Peter Drucker).

The speaker roster at our Social Enterprise Summit in November tries to reflect this observation, in that we have invlited some real “best of” practitioners from Europe and the UK to speak. We are also giving a 1 day workshop the day before where we will present a wide array of “best practice” case studies from all over Europe as well as the UK.

Update – interesting article over here by Gloria Lombardi on the Northern European view od Social collaboration

February 17, 2014 By Janet Parkinson

Employee Engagement : The New Heart of Enterprise 2.0?

‘7 out of 10 of your colleagues don’t give a sh*t about your company. The biggest problem is employee engagement” Luis Suarez at the Enterprise 2.0 Summit, Paris 2014

Luis was using figures from this Gallup survey which highlights how only 13% of employees worldwide are engaged at work. He’s right – but why is this? You only have to look at the rise in volume of Google searches for the term over the last 5 years to see just what a buzzword ’employee engagement’ it is becoming, and it does lie at the heart of the Social Business / Business Transformation / Enterprise 2.0 ethos – so why the poor figures?

There has been so much research produced over the years showing that employee engagement really does help the bottom line that no one can deny that benefits really do exist. Take just one set of results by Gallup of meta-analysis of 1.4 million employees which shows that organizations with a high level of engagement do report 22% higher productivity, and Harvard Business Research which states:

‘strong employee engagement promotes a variety of outcomes that are good for employees and customers. For instance, highly engaged organizations have double the rate of success of lower engaged organizations. Comparing top-quartile companies to bottom-quartile companies, the engagement factor becomes very noticeable. For example, top-quartile firms have lower absenteeism and turnover. Specifically, high-turnover organizations report 25% lower turnover, and low-turnover organizations report 65% lower turnover.”

Social tools have been shown to be some of the most powerful enablers of employee engagement over the last few years as reports by McKinsey have shown.

Yet it seems that only now companies are catching up with the technology and beginning to take on board the true power of the social tools available to them. Having spent the last 5 years or so adapting their external marketing mix to absorb the power of social media, they are beginning to realise the full potential of internal social tools which are speeding up business processes and breaking down silos allowing employees to collaborate more effectively and at greater speeds. Happier employees providing customer service support really does produce better customer service results. Companies now realise that with social tools which run in realtime they cannot remain hidden behind a wall. They therefore no longer have the option to ignore it – employee engagement is about to hit big time.

As Luis notes in the interview below it is only in the last 2 years that we are beginning to hear more about behavior and how to influence mindsets rather than just hearing about the social tools. “We are not there yet… but now that we are talking about behavior we will begin to see a massive shift in the way that employees are engaged in the work that they do”.

It was great to see though that employee engagement appeared as a key component of the Summit (which was after all traditionally a technology conference). Yet it was right up front with both headliners. Dan Pontefract of Telus stated:

It’s not the tools it’s the behaviour
Engagement is a big driver of profitability which in turn is driving HR activity now
You can tie engagement to KPI drivers

and Jon Mell of IBM who noted:

Employee engagement drives customer satisfaction which drives profits
There are analytics now behind employee engagement which are key to the whole process, from interview questions to the proactive retention of the best employees
HR now has a seat at the table and has the power.

Many of the case studies touched upon engagement – though more often in terms of collaboration than specifically in terms of engagement.

Emanuele Quinterelli of Ernst & Young noted how in a survey of 300 Italian firms:

Currently the laggards tend to have no one in charge of collaboration as such
56% of laggards have virtually no budget for collaboration while the top performers have at least 100k Euros of yearly budget and use business metrics 3 times more
50% of laggards have no measurement, though only 9% of leaders have measurement in place
Leaders are engaging employees to engage customers

Martin Risgaard Rasmussen described how Grundfoss have deployed a program of culture change called Global Working Culture – run by HR.

HR – the company leaders of the future?

Following on from Jon Mell’s remark there are others who agree that HR really does have a seat at the table and Mar. Oracle president Mark Hurd last October called for HR to transform itself and start to lead and drive businesses:

‘I want HR to help me run the company, to help with insight that will allow me to make the key business decisions, which will help the company grow… Over the next decade HR as a function needs to lead and drive the business rather than react to it… It’s going to have to drive it in a way that’s more complicated than anyone has ever experienced before… Turning from a support function to a leadership function will be core to what HR does in the next decade”

But in addition to HR let’s not forget the role of community managers. At the Summit Rachel Happe discussed how to drive engagement and adoption on social platforms. “A Community Manager has to inspire, establish and normalize a behavior change, this drives ROI” she said in a recent interview. Community managers do act as lynchpins to networks which are increasingly crucial to the whole social business process. Their role can encompass not just the monitoring and enhancement of engagement right across a company but also can provide and evaluate what can work better for the success of engagement across the whole community.

Employee Engagement – The Vision

But perhaps the killer statement for me in terms of employee engagement came from a casual tweet by Luis on the second day of the Summit:

To truly engage employees to increase the performance and profitability of companies isn’t the ultimate deal to enable employees to own shares in the company?

Employee ownership is indeed on the rise:

“Employee ownership, where workers have a voice as well as a stake in the success of their business, is recognised as a sustainable business model which helps drive staff commitment, productivity, resilience and innovation.” Real Business

And:

“Total return for shareholders in FTSE companies with employee share ownership rose by 53% in 2013, compared to 21% for companies in the FTSE All-share index, according to research by corporate finance firm Capital Strategies and the London Stock Exchange.” Employee Benefits

It’s becoming clearer that the way companies currently structure measurement and reward just isn’t working. If you want employees to be truly engaged and really feel part of the big picture then treating them as cogs in the wheel and rewarding them for just being good cogs is never going to be enough. Having a stake in the business will motivate them to take a business sized view.

Best of all it appears that Luis even has the UK government on his side…

“Policy makers are increasingly embracing employee ownership as a key sustainable business model, and over the last 18 months we have seen a significant increase in support for this sector. In his budget in April this year (2013), George Osborne announced that, with effect from 2014, the Treasury would set aside £50m in tax reliefs for the employee ownership sector. On top of this, in yesterday’s Autumn Statement George Osborne put the Government’s money where its mouth is, pledging a further £25m in support of this fast-growing sector of the UK…” Real Business

Well, we’re not sure how many years we’ll have to wait for employee ownership to really take off and become the norm – but perhaps Luis should come over to London to give George a helping hand 😉

Image by Frederic Williquet: @fredericw : https://twitter.com/fredericw/media

February 17, 2014 By David Terrar

Agile Elephant at Enterprise 2.0 Summit Report

My first post introduced the Enterprise 2.0 Summit, the social business topic in general and speakers at the event at ESCP Europe. This is my conference report. I’ll start by setting the scene with my impressions, then pick out highlights, draw some conclusions and finally link to the other Agile Elephant posts about the Summit.

IMPRESSIONS

From where we were in 2006 at the Office 2.0 show or in 2007 at Open Knowledge’s first Enterprise 2.0 Forum in Varese, I could be depressed that we aren’t further forward with enterprise 2.0 and social business. However, that’s more to do with the fact that we are in the middle of a change in business behavior that may take 10-30 years.
I’m incredibly optimistic about what is happening now. That’s why we just made a leap of faith and started Agile Elephant as a new social business consultancy a few weeks ago. The mood at the conference confirmed our feeling that this topic is poised to cross the chasm and go mainstream.
Enterprise 2.0/Social Business is a complex topic. The elephant in the enterprise room. There is a definite divide in thinking between two camps. Those of us at the summit who want to get top down executive commitment and a focus on hard business numbers and real ROI, versus those that focus on the culture change required to move to a more sharing, open business combined with the structural change required to move companies to more networked rather than hierarchical organisational structures. Both of these are important. Both of these require new or different leadership thinking.
Most of us attending the conference are somewhere at the leading edge of this topic. As a movement, we need to get organised to spread the word and break through to the average business person in the average company so they understand the benefits of social business.

CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHTS

Dan Pontefract of Telus opened the conference eloquently explaining his company’s journey in to social business. Key things he said or described:

It’s not the tool it’s the behaviour
It’s about collaborative behaviour aided and abetted by social tools
A woman adding a 6 minute video to the community of her 10 coaching tips, it got 1000 hits and 62 comments, and she answered every one individually
He used a metaphor of Canada geese flying in a scheme, a V formation, rotating the leadership – our orgs need to be like that
There is potential energy in everyone, how do you convert that in to kinetic energy?

Jon Mell of IBM called out to me from the stage remembering Varese 2007 making the point we’ve been at this a long time. Some key things he said

Think of the best manager and the worst manager you’ve had, and that their good/bad behaviours aren’t easily found on their CV
That means when you’re hiring someone, how they might fit your culture can’t be see on a CV
He explained how Caterpiller have seen that where employees are highly engaged, there are 3 times less accidents and that translates straight to the bottom line
He talked about AMC – they focus on popcorn sales as a key metric – what makes great popcorn sellers, and good managers of popcorn sellers, how do we hire and attract them, share the learning – getting it right translated in to a 1.2% increase in profit per customer

The best case study at the summit was Joachim Heinz explaining Social Business @ Bosch. He explained how they have 300,000 associates, create more than 16 patents a day, have been taking Bosch to 2.0 and now have 60,000 people on boarded to their social platform. 80% of their communities are open – you have to apply for a private group. It’s called Bosch Connect – you can “go there, make a wiki and you’re done in 30 minutes”. They have created 13 different use cases and he explained they are:

Shifting core processes in to social
Using social to enable leadership
Providing senior managers with Enterprise 2.0 mentoring using digital natives, but they are discovering that ideas are going both ways, it’s not a monologue
And that the wake up call for Bosch management was the fact that Tesla could design a new car in 2 years, whereas BMW/Mercedes take 6 years – that’s digital disruption!

Emanuele Quinterelli of Ernst & Young, who I first met when he invited me to speak at that E2.0 Forum in Varese in 2007, set the scene for our panel discussion on Strategic Enablement. He presented the results of their survey of 300 Italian firms where 54% of them have between 10% and 30% adoption of social business. He presented the 6 key findings:

Top down commitment – if top executives are on board, nobody in middle management can sabotage the shift to social business – a very tough but crucial message
Strategy – a well structured roll out strategy is key, hybrid works, but top down is 2 times more successful in achieving adoption
The people factor – laggards tended to have no-one in charge of collaboration, leadership of collaboration works
Money where it matters – the leaders had budget balanced between strategy, tech and change management, and 50% more than others
Measurement is important to steer and sell it – half of laggards have no measurement at all, 91% of leaders have measurement in place, top performers use business metrics 3 times more
Social business is here already – leaders are engaging employees to engage customers, internally and externally – 23% of the top performers are planning end to end social business projects in the next 2 years

Martin Risgaard Rasmussen explained the Grundfos story, but also that he is in the process of leaving to join Yammer. Grundfos has been around since 1945, has 18,000 people and is the World’s biggest pump manufacturer – take a look at your central heating system next time you open the airing cupboard. They have deployed a program of culture change they call Global Working Culture run by HR. They are moving to social business to get more out of the work they already do. It’s all explained in a brilliant hard copy white paper called “Social Business Cooking at Grundfos”, there is more at socialbusinessjourney.com, and I’ll post a link to a PDF when I find one. Some of the things Martin said:

Participation inequality, the 1-9-90 rule is real
You need at least 1 designated community manager otherwise it won’t work
He emphasised the importance of a clear purpose and finding use cases
He explained how they integrate social into their business process
They focus on culture
He talked Simon Sinek’s Start with why (and we love that!)
He explained how they looked at Chatter, Yammer, and Socialcast, but chose Yammer

Joachim Niemeyer of centrestage talked about leading the transformation required. He talked about needing the active support of top management, the need for a clearly defined target audience, about capability, having a clear vision, defined business objectives and a well developed roadmap. He highlighted the importance of use cases with high potential business value and a toolbox for systematic change. He was another one who emphasised integration in to business process.

I missed Claire Flanagan of Jive talking about proven social business adoption strategies, but her slides have some great messages

I missed great presentations by Rachel Happe and Jane McConnell too.

On day 2, Lee Bryant of Postshift said a lot I could agree with, and some things I might argue with. He doesn’t agree that social business should be about process. He worries that some of us are adopting an approach that is all about a market for consulting services and software, that’s aligned to the way companies are used to buying. He worries that the approach is not about new business models or new types of organisation. He talked about killing the org chart with social tools. Some of the things he said:

We’ve move beyond Taylorism – productivity has gone quantum
He talked about the effectiveness of small co-ordinated, agile teams
Knowledge sharing beats cascaded best practice
He worried that so many companies have too many generic managers – they don’t have skills, they’re just politicians
Communities and networks are the fabric of the organisation (right on!)
He quoted our friend Dave Gray‘s The Connected Company – popular working needs an underpinning service, as well as about fractal structured organisations
He went through a selection of companies that have adopted a completely different, often decentralised organisation and leadership approach – including Morning Star, Valve, Kyocera and one of my favourites WL Gore
He talked Holacracy, Sociocracy, and the Kotter dual operation system
He talked agile work group of 5-8, then Pod groups of 12, then group of pods totalling 140 (see Alan’s recent post on Dunbar numbers – there are more than one!)
He mentioned how you need an influencer, a keeper of stories – like Marc Benioff who is brilliant at that
He referenced the fantastic changes that the UK’s Cabinet Office have done reorganising government IT functions
He said he wasn’t arguing for flat structures or the end of leadership, but for for the end of managers
He also said it doesn’t matter what we call this topic with a slide full of socbiz and 2.0 hashtags (see thesis 9 of our Manifesto)

BernardMarie Chiquet of iGi Partners extended the discussion further in to Holacracy. He suggested we have to go to the motherboard of the organisation structure (I like that!). He talked about a move to “purpose driven” not “for profit or not for profit”. He argued that order doesn’t require bosses. He talked of needing a constitution for the organisation, like the king handing over power to a new form democracy enshrined in the constitution. He talked about organising the work, not the people. He wanted to break down the purpose in to functions and the functions in to roles – that being the basic brick, element where work needed to be done. He suggested:

There are 3 dimensions – purpose, accountabilities, domains
You need a governance process – but that might be a 2 hours meeting every 2 weeks
It takes a village to raise an organisation with organisation, people and a purpose

At a about this point Jon Husband tweeted “The Holacracy tension a notion that comes from Robert Fritz’s concept of Structural tension, from OD world of the early to mid-90’s #e20s“. Jon clearly thinks that holacracy is 90s OD and other thinking re-presented for this new century. He joined the panel discussion, which was really entertaining. They talked more about the org chart being roles and not people. They talked about the time span of decision making and how far out you can look for strategic decision making. We now we live in a World where a few tweets can put your business in deep trouble – difficult to be strategic with change happening in near real time. Jon talked Transactional Analysis, the book “I’m OK, Your OK” and how the goal is to move from parent-child to adult-adult negotiations. He believes the next stage of social business is a deep movement, that is a 20-30 year process, but he characterised the stage we are at in the journey by the pilot coming on the intercom and saying:

“Buckle up your seatbelts, there’s turbulence ahead!”

Back in the main hall, Celine Schillinger of Sanofi-Pasteur told the inspirational story of her journey in to social business and being a change agent. She talked vision, openness, information and cultures. She explained how things changed for her when she sent an email to her CEO back in 2011 around the issue of gender diversity. That went viral, and triggered her creating a community on their internal social platform that has grown beyond 2,500 members in 50 countries, with concrete measures to achieve gender balance that changed her company. She went on to explain how Sanofi are using the same type of community approach to fight Dengue Fever, but lifting it beyond a company initiative to a global fight against the enemy/disease.

Dion Hinchcliffe of Dachis Group closed the formal presentations with a final keynote. He suggested we should let the network do the work. He asked if we can apply social business frameworks in most industry sectors, across different geographies, and even differing corporate cultures? Will they work, will they lower the risk, get faster results, get better results? He talked about T-mobile cutting customer defections in half. He talked of advocate programs becoming a major new element of organisation structure. He wondered who should own the social business topic? He explained that a framework is a pre-built approach with holes cut out for the details of your business. He used Rachel Happe’s Community Model as an example. He suggested that:

It’s easier to add social rather than change the fundamentals of the existing systems
Business models need to be updated
The move to Social Business is inevitable, and a good thing
We should take care as it is easy to be far too technology centric

CONCLUSIONS

So, it was a great conference full of good content, strong case studies and inspirational speakers (with only one low point). My key takeaways from the Summit:

There is a shift happening. We may be in the middle of a 20-30 year change but as a community we can feel the rate of change accelerating and Social Business is set to cross the chasm and go mainstream.
For Social Business projects to improve their chances of success we need top level executive commitment – a message that was repeated in many of the sessions.
The way to get that commitment is to talk hard business numbers and real return on investment, picking up on the case study stories from Bosch, Grundfos, Caterpiller, T-Mobile and others mentioned at the show.
The culture change required to move to a more sharing, open business model combined with the structural change required to move companies to more networked rather than hierarchical organisational structures is crucially important too.
The frameworks, techniques and behaviours around community building are still vital to this topic.
We’ve been talking social business around CRM for a while. The talk has shifted to leadership and employee engagement, bringing social business firmly inside the organisation.
The enterprise 2.0/social business community needs to take the message to the wider business community. We need to talk less jargon and more business benefits. We need a clear message in an easily digestible format. Social business works and produces real business benefits – let’s get on with it!

Key factors for Strategic Enablement

Here is the panel session that I took part in at the Enterprise 2.0 Summit in Paris this week, on 11th & 12th February 2014. We were discussing the key factors for strategic enablement of enterprise 2.0, social business, and social collaboration in organisations. Emanuele Quintarelli set the scene presenting a survey of Italian firms. Then the discussion, moderated by Bjoern Negelmann, was between:

Emanuele Quintarelli – Digital Transformation Practice Leader, Ernst & Young
Luis Suarez – formerly Social Computing evangelist, IBM Software group
Dr. Chee Chin Liew – Enterprise Community Manager, BASF SE
David Terrar – Founder & CXO, Agile Elephant
Simon Levene – Senior Strategy Consultant, Jive Software

There was actually some tension between the speakers, resulting in a great discussion. The tension is between the likes of Emanuele and myself who want to lift the argument to real, hard, business numbers and metrics that the executives in the C-Suite can understand in a business case, versus Luis and others at the conference who want to focus on the culture change required in the workplace, on improving employee engagement, the move to knowledge sharing, open business and collaboration, with use cases that are effective. Both are important. But to accelerate things, it’s my belief we need cold, hard business logic combined with the inspiration to change to open business. Listen to the discussion and you decide.

Here are a few key quotes I’ve lifted out of the dialogue:

“7 out of your 10 colleagues don’t give s#%! about what you do today!”

“need more doing than talking”

“go back to the core nature of how work gets done”

“how can I help you today?”

“but first of all we need to make it clear to the business where is the benefit”

“does management agree or recognise social as an enabling tool for more engagement and to solve the problem of the fundamental (financial) crisis?”

“not happening yet because we are talking about collaboration, we are not talking about measurable business benefits”

“the majority of people in this room are believers in this thing”

“it’s up to us as a community to get out there and communicate it better to the average business person in the street

“it’s all about use cases, if you come up with a list of top 10, 15 use cases of how people work and socialise them”

“break a silo, and you go in to openness and transparency”

My post setting the scene and introducing the show is here, and my conference report will follow shortly.

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Key factors for Strategic Enablement

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