Four Groups Blog

I’ve just read the great piece from Jon Husband at the FASTForward blog and its made me think a great deal about Enterprise 2.0 (E2) stuff and how this compares to other new technologies and methods that we’ve seen play out in the last 20/30 years.

My thinking is as follows;

• E2 can be framed both as a technology and as a cultural shift
• Its takeup is clearly very different from hard technologies e.g. email, personal computers, blackberries, databases etc.
• Adoption is also very different from technological/methodological hybrids e.g. CRM, BRP(?), ERP and JIT amongst others
• Likewise, the debate about top down and bottom up drivers of adoption is new(ish)
• E2 seeks a different culture from command and control in which to thrive

Thus;

• Given the potentially disruptive nature of E2
• Its perceived low cost of technology
• The apparent need to be integrated into processes (see Howlett for example!)
• Its material ‘distributed’ impact on culture and values (what can’t be E2′ed?)

It will either;

Take hold on a case by case basis, varying from organisation to organisation and function to function, eventually fulfilling its potential and bringing about a subtle change in culture, the credit for which will vary dramatically and some will claim it was their idea from day!

or

Fail to take hold as the organisation seeks to control and police (in the nicest possible way of course!) the various elements of E2

Therefore;

• E2 is a bit of a slippery eel, who knows where it will go next
• E2 doesn’t lend itself to linear outcomes and cost/benefit analysis (hard but not impossible!)
• Claiming credit and gaining influence for E2 is anyone’s guess

As Jon writes himself;

I am not aware of significant work in the general area of changes to mainstream HR practices as a result of embarking on the path towards Enterprise 2.0.  I will be delighted to learn from any of you of examples and / or issues I may have missed or glossed over.

My guess is that we’ll be waiting quite a while…

Rather than bandwagoning around E2, I think that setting out to claim a element of an organisation that can be improved and has thus far been overlooked will reap richer rewards.

Many thanks to Anne Marie for the brainstorm

A good friend, Professor Vlatka Hlupic recently had a piece published in Harvard Business Review called ‘To Be a Better Leader, Give up Authority‘. Congratulations!

The piece focuses on leadership, giving up power as a leader and witnessing corresponding improvements in performance. There are also case studies from CSC and ANADIGICS showing some attractive financial improvements as a result of this new way of working.

Over and above the financial improvements, perhaps the most interesting aspect of the article is the idea of “mutualism.”

Mutualism involves measuring workers not against revenue or other numerical goals, which we have observed to be ineffective as motivational tools, but against qualitative values such as trust, responsibility, and innovation.

And it implies that leaders don’t dictate vision or strategy; instead, they enable employees to create a common vision through, for example, off-sites for discussion of strategic issues and regular feedback and education. Hitting numerical goals has been the natural outcome.

It will be interesting to see if methods such as mutualism increase in popularity and adoption over the coming months.

Welcome to 2009’s third quarterly review, as with previous issues, engagement continues to be at the forefront of people’s thoughts. Behind the engagement debate however there seems to be a growing call for a wider reappraisal of the fundamental way corporations are organised and for me personally, this is the most interesting aspect of this quarter’s articles. Other themes include;

• Shifting the Organisational Pyramid
• The McLeod Review on Employee Engagement
• The Leader/Manager Debate
• Line Managers who Lead
• The Intrinsic Motivation of Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose
• The Irrationality of Human Behaviour
• Tomorrow’s HR Professionals – A Multi-Disciplinary Background

Articles are included from the likes of Harvard Business School, Henry Mintzberg, HR Magazine, McKinsey, the McLeod Review, the Partnership Institute, Personnel Today, Strategy + Business and TED.

Tag Cloud

(more…)

We lose the opportunity for change, or for texture or creativity…

(at least according to Seth Godin)

Here’s the full piece…

Is everything okay? Unless you work in a nuclear power plant, the answer is certainly no (and if you work there, I hope the answer is yes.) No, everything is not okay. Not in a growing organization. Not if your company is making change happen, or dealing with customers. How could it be? And yet, that’s what so many managers focus on. How to make everything okay. We spend so much time smoothing things out, we lose the opportunity for change, or for texture or creativity. Instead of working so hard to make everything okay, perhaps it is more helpful to work hard at living with a world that rarely is.

Reading it again, do we really want things to be just ‘ok’ or do we need to revisit the mission statments again?

I think it was Henry Ford or was it Barack Obama who said;

Being OK is what makes America great

Can anyone remind me please?

While this isn’t a Carry On film, Oliver Marks says that

In lots of large corporations, innovation and integration are unnatural acts. Silos block cross functional cooperation and resistance stifles new ideas and concepts.

A piece in HBR then “explores how some companies are overcoming these boundaries by proposing and establishing two new types of cross-organizational teams.”

This also reminds me of Jody Hoffer Gittell and her work on relationship coordination to raise performance by integrating teams and departments.