Organisational change

"Transforming the Enterprise As We Know It"

Not large corporations, but networks of small companies and individuals will be the future drivers for innovation and prosperity. A policy paper of The Lisbon Council.

"How Freelancers and Technology-Savvy Start-Ups are Driving Growth, Jobs and Innovation, "

"Over the weekend my friend and industry colleague JP Rangaswami wrote an insightful post that pondered how we have gone about delivering on customer experiences as connected to our back-end capabilities. Specifically, he explored an issue that is increasingly challenging many of the large-company CIOs I speak with these days: That the present rates of change demanded of the accumulation of 20-30 years of legacy business systems is greatly exceeding the ability of our enterprises and associated software "stacks" to deliver on them, particularly as cloud, social, and mobile dramatically transform computing today. "

The employees are a company's most valuable assets. So they say. But do they really understand what it means?

"This isn't a "shock & awe" title to merely draw you in. This also isn't a blanket claim from an "expert" who has never been in the trenches that "social business is dead". Enterprise 2.0 (aka social business) is not dead. Significant progress continues to be made. More and more enterprises have social business strategies and efforts for both marketing & internal collaboration. However, enterprises with several years of Enterprise 2.0 efforts under their belt have failed to reach the tipping point and cross into mainstream adoption of social collaboration . Coincidentally, Dion Hinchcliffe recently noted in The Path to Co-Creating a Social Business, the existence of the fissure with older collaborative channels on one side and the option to voluntarily engage socially on the other. I believe this is a sign post that we must pay attention to and make adjustments or social business could fall deeply into the rabbit hole where knowledge management (KM) efforts of past, already reside. "

Trust is a business perennial-from the days when chickens were traded for cowrie shells until we start trading with extraterrestrial races, trust has been and always will be the central factor in business relationships. However in the networked world there are three vital shifts in the nature and role of trust.

Economies of scale are well understood. Bigger factories are more efficient, bigger distribution networks are more efficient, bigger ad campaigns can be more efficient. It's often hard to defeat a major competitor, particularly if the market is looking for security and the status quo. But what about the economies of small? Is being bigger an intrinsic benefit in and of itself?

The MIX is an open innovation project aimed at reinventing management for the 21st century. However, does it make sense reinventing management, without first reinventing companies?

Over the last year, I've been doing a lot of research on how organizations will need to evolve to meet the demands of the 21st century. The central premise of this work is that new technologies, most of which have appeared only within the last decade, greatly amplify our abilities to interact simultaneously with large numbers of people. The frontier of human productive capacity today is the power of extended collaboration - the ability to work together beyond the scope of small groups.

When trying to address complexity, we always try doing it in a logical way. We first try 'understanding' the problem at hand and then, we take 'logical' action. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. You have to counter complexity with complex response.

I rarely come across leaders who advocate wholesale organizational redesign or use it as a way to support their people and business. When organizational strategy changes, structures, roles, and functions should be realigned with the new objectives. This doesn't always happen, with the result that responsibilities can be overlooked, staffing can be inappropriate, and people - and even functions - can work against each other.

A Towers Watson global workforce study found that only 20% of employees are truly engaged in their work - heart and soul. As a student of management, I'm depressed by the fact that so many people find work depressing.

The name we give to something influences the way we look at it. It creates another perspective on the same reality. In many cases, this can be very useful. However, perception alone does not create a different reality.

Last year I was asked what I thought about Enterprise 2.0 (E2.0). While it's a popular subject amongst some management theorists, there aren't many examples of E2.0 in practice. Peter Evans-Greenwood has a good analysis of why E2.0 is not ready for mainstream business implementation due to regulatory constraints.

Traditional design professionals who want to apply their methodologies to organizational systems change and business strategy should be prepared for a diversity of responses from organizational managers. Some will welcome your unique perspective and experiences, your creative problem-solving and communication skills, and your willingness to work collaboratively across disciplines. However, you also need to prepare for the possibility of disdain, confusion, and resistance from others.

When talking about 'social business', most of us see this as an evolution of today's companies, supported by new communication and collaboration technologies. It is not. Social business is a choice for another, more meaningful business.