He doesn't sound confused to me

JP Rangaswami speaks of what people really do in the enterprise and how technology can and should assist those human needs. Some sound bites:

“…it is only a matter of time before enterprise software consists of only four types of application: publishing, search, fulfillment and conversation.”

“In an enterprise these relationships are usually to do with the department the person belongs to, and the reporting line. What utter tosh. Those are not relationships. They are irritants. Irritants apparently required in order for people to allocate costs and profits accurately….I am prepared to change my mind on this, the day I meet a customer who cares about what department I work in or whom I report to.”

“…people appear to ‘work’ by doing four things:

They look proactively for information. They search for things.
They receive information because they said they were interested in receiving that information. They subscribe to things.
They talk to each other using various forms of communication: letter, e-mail, audio, video, text, IM, blog, wiki, twitter, whatever. They are even known occasionally to talk to each other face to face without use of technology.
And they transact business as a result. Within the enterprise. In the extended enterprise and partners and supply chain. With customers.

People do all this now. But we do not have the tools to do the job well.”

Thank you, JP for addressing what’s been missing in much the Enterprise 2.o talk of late, that being the question of “why?”. For a long time it seemed like there were two vectors driving the conversation:

a) Pro: “Look at all this AJAX-y goodness! We must bolt this on to our ERP so it doesn’t appear to be so hard to use!”

b) Con: “People are cats, they are unloyal and must be herded. Do not give them freedom to go outside the box (pun intended) or we shall introduce Risk.”

JP highlights the reason social computing has taken off – people are social and desire community. In the enterprise that means we want to work together in a fluid, on-demand manner. Nothing provided in of standard office productivity tool suite does that. They’re fine for turning concepts into artifacts, like insects in amber, but interchange is asynchronous and awkward at best. We fought for IM behind the firewall ten years ago and it’s still unusual to find widespread use.

In my workplace people form virtual teams around projects. Organizationally we’re pretty flat except for natural team groupings around core competencies like graphics, usability, technology, etc. A natural pattern has emerged where folks on a project tend to take over an available space – usually conference rooms – and cluster together so they have proximity to share ideas while their heads are stuck in their laptops creating the artifacts that emerge from their interaction. The fellow whose office is next to mine hasn’t been in it in 6 weeks. They sometimes bring graphics, products and designs into the room that reflect the project that end up being the cave paintings representing their new environment and their recent hunts as they share stories around the virtual fire.

OK – maybe that’s kind of stretching it to the poetic, the point is people require freedom to congregate and bounce off each other if they are going to produce excellence. Malcolm Gladwell holds that modern genius emerges more from collaboration than from the lone insightful person (video here).

I’ve know of an organization whose 3-year plan includes a key feature – Employee Development. Yet they have no training and development resources at the corporate level, and precious few in the businesses. This disconnect is where we find the enterprise; they truly want employees to collaborate. Yet the best tools: audio, video, text, IM, blog, wiki, twitter…are often unavailable or even banned for fear that the cats will be distracted into mere chit-chat.

As I write I see that Michael has asked for thoughts about how social computing tools can play inside the firewall. Consider this a start. I’ll say that the first critical aspect for social computing success in the enterprise would be to ‘trust…but verify’.

More later.

Rachel 20070808

Rachel got a tattoo

Hi we miss everyone

Chat with Rachel

Juno takes a swim

It was hot, and she came in the pool a few times.

Anonymous BloggerCon 2.0 – or, It R.U.B.s off

It’s always a pleasure when Dubs is in town and we get together over dinner. Last week was one of those times, we met at one of the great barbecue places in Manhattan, R.U.B. – the acronym stands for Righteous Urban Barbecue. The place is owned by Paul Kirk, a bona fide Kansas City BBQ master – he’s won many awards in the competitive barbecue circuit, but the food speaks for itself. Go there.

While we attacked a preposterous amount of food I talked about some challenges I’ve been having with a client whose HR organization and programs are in a state of disarray and neglect. I said it had occurred to me that because of that exposure I must be sounding pretty cranky in my recent posts and comments lately, and he went big-eyed and said something like, “I was wondering what was going on!”

Art can reflect life, and my life has clearly been rubbing off on my art. I’m an extremely pragmatic person – I recall a psychological assessment I took as part of a leadership program that landed me dead center between strategic and tactical. I love being a futurist but I also need to get things built and out the door, in today’s terms. I get great satisfaction in connecting those points.

My client needs us to help them stop the bleeding and get the fundamentals straightened out. We’re all over that, but we’re also providing tools to help get them past the pain and make their platform something that will let them act strategically moving forward. That’s where the success will be, not in the tactical part.

There are 3 sides to every story.

In an impressive one-two combo, Jim points out how re-evaluation of HR-to-business alignment and priorities is an ongoing job, and then, hardly pausing for breath, he expands the recent discussions on HR-to-business alignment by reminding us of the CEO’s responsibility to invest strategically in HR. Spot on, we’ve indulged in a lot of HR bashing of late (and I’ve been one of the bashers). True, there’s solid grounds for highlighting disconnect between business goals and HR strategy but it’s also a truth that HR is ofttimes funded as a shared administrative service to be run using a low-cost model. This generates contradictory demands, like mandates to use common platforms and processes while insisting that regions and business units be flexible and responsive to local dynamics.

Add securing financial and program support from the corner office that reinforces the strategic partnership to the duties of the tactical-yet-strategic SHRO.

Walk, then run.

Michael talks about why Web 2.0 sucks, and Dubs wonders how to apply Web 2.0 to HR. Maybe I’m jaded but most enterprises haven’t yet figured out how to apply Web 1.0 to HR.

Please tell me I’m wrong.

Should we worry about the children?

My ‘conference friend’ Rich has a cool new job – good stuff, Rich! I started to reply to something he wrote but it got so long I figured I’d better put it here instead.

Read Our Future Colleagues Have MySpace Accounts for the context first.

Rich, If you’re a dinosaur…I must be petrified. New grads coming into the workplace are closer in age to my children than to myself. My kids (13 and 11) are growing up wifi; not just laptops but PSPs, Sidekicks and Nintendo DS and the observations about handwriting, spelling, jargon – are on point, but in my opinion it’s more reflective of our struggle to adapt, just like the dinosaurs.

Younger folks have always integrated technology and information pipelines better than older generations. Further, If I can use my kid’s educations are any kind of benchmark, they’re getting a lot more knowledge and academic challenges thrown at them at an earlier age than we did.

The ability of any given youth to function socially still boils down to the individual level. My daughter would appear to be a poster child for ADD-style overload. She’ll be texting in her room with the TV, laptop and sometimes video iPod (with one earbud inserted) going. Yet she got amazing grades last quarter and is a social butterfly with a large circle of friends. My son is a different archetype – he’s much more of a loner, with few friends but deep passions that he explores fully offline and online. One day he casually told me he corrected the Wikipedia entry on a book series he was reading – he’s the 11 year old. He couldn’t understand why I was amazed at that.

I do see one commonality that worries me, it’s less about social engagement and getting out than it is about our increasing inability to be alone with ourselves. I see people filling up time that was formerly contemplative with some other form of connection – cell phones. Better than 50% of people I see driving, walking dogs, out for a stroll are on their phones. I don’t fear a future where life is experienced from behind a screen but one where nobody is comfortable being alone with their thoughts.