By Thierry de Baillon
Version française ici.
A small conversation with Olivier Blanchard (@thebrandbuilder ) on Twitter left me with an interesting question: what drives us into the need and will to change long time cultural habits (the kind of paper we are writing on), if not fancying novelty? My take is that setting our mind in a different environment not only enables a different perception of our surrounding, even if this environment is as trivial as a sheet of paper, but also changes our very way of thinking, in this case helping us fostering new ideas. Typically, it means emergence.
Technology always has deeply influenced our lives and behaviors. The wheel had revolutionized our geographical influence, electricity allowed us to extend our physical abilities, all of this because some people shifted their thinking from the primary destination of these technologies to new uses, empowering their real potential. Innovation always has been a matter of shifting the way we look at current objects, behaviors, usages or processes, finding and leveraging new patterns from the existing.
2.0 technologies are already changing the way we are using the Web, the way we are connecting, conversing and interacting with each other. We discovered that these conversations are a totally new way to learn, to collaborate and to exchange knowledge, but most of our initiatives are still about harnessing these technologies into existing models. To go further, really unleash their potential and embrace the systemic changes they are allowing, we all need a shift.
One of the current trends in Enterprise 2.0 frameworks is the use of social tools to optimize business processes, to fit them into the existing, or to replace them when (and only when) they fall short. This, of course, will minimize failure cases, will speed up business efficiency and facilitate adoption in organizations. But…. where is the shift? Our process driven businesses are no more than thirty years old, and were born from a misunderstanding of Japanese heterarchic and consensual social culture. A process-oriented approach to Enterprise 2.0 won’t allow place for the most powerful aspects of what the Social Web emphasizes: self-organization, non deterministic outcome, unconstrained trust, informal knowledge capture, borderless ecosystems, etc.
We have no tangible, rational proof that the process driven organization is the best model for today businesses, apart from “it works better than before” statements. One of the main reasons why companies are not ready to shift to another, networked, model is risk avoidance. While sustainability, and the gain of new competitive advantages, are crucial for any business, risk avoidance is a management and delivery model which literally turns its back to the non-linear complex world we are living in, and are in fine unsustainable. The very nature of CAS makes them unsuitable for complicated rules and determinist mechanisms, and complexity must instead be embraced with simple, quickly reconfigurable rules.
Marketing, too, needs a shift to truly take into account and take advantage from new customers’ behaviors. A drastic change happened since Peter Drucker wrote that marketing and innovation are the two basic functions of enterprise; both are now tightly connected through direct unbiased interactions with customers. The rise of Social CRM tools allow marketers to get insights from consumers and exchange knowledge to build better customer experiences. This dive into the Social Web and into the conversations blooming everywhere is of course a gold mine for today’s marketing. But if the data those conversations convey is capital for sales or the customer relations department, the weak signals embedded into those interactions are even more important for innovation and for every core business activity. By allowing putting the customer’s voice at the center of organizations, Social CRMs are true design thinking tools. Here lies their real power. To harness it, marketers, from being an interface between businesses and customers, must shift to become real ‘trends amplifiers’, and get ready for a role convergence with innovators, leaving data crunching and mining to an evolving sales department.
By Thierry de Baillon
Version française ici.
The Web, the engine of our hyper-connected world, is now real time, whether on our personal part or in Enterprise, and, wish it or not, there is no way back. Jeremiah Owyang recently stated that the trend toward immediacy will go even further, leaving place for the Intention Web, allowing “Businesses [to] provide a more contextualized experience for customers or prospects using Social CRM”.
But as convincing the examples he gives are, I don’t believe that time acceleration will give birth to a new predictive marketing. As Albert Einstein said, “I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.” Why should brands bother to bid on customers’ intent, when a huge untapped world of opportunities already exists? Welcome to the frightening Emotion Web.
There is no need to go as far as French philosopher Paul Virillio did a few months ago, stating that “immediacy is the opposite of information”, but it becomes obvious that immediacy (as induced by real time tools) doesn’t leave room for critical or deep thinking, and instead favors affective reactions. Examples of empathy-driven manifestations are numerous (the Iranian elections movement, mass reactions to accidents or striking events, notably on Twitter, where a lot of charities have already taken the Real Time Web into (positive) action.
Empathy marketing is just a step away, allowing brands to raise sentiment through contextualized messages. A few years ago, Patrick Le Lay, former CEO of French TV channel TF1, said “he was selling minutes of available brain” when interviewed about TV advertising. I don’t think it will take long before businesses start to consider the Real Time Web as a real opportunity and find here a way to regain control about their brands.
It might be even more frightening than you think. Driving empathy through carefully chosen channels is a thing, but just consider what would happen if, instead of empathy, one would choose to raise hate… From Motrin to United, uses of social media to bash brands aren’t uncommon already… I don’t believe in the Intention Web, but am really concerned about the Emotion Web, and the way it might influence our lives, for better or for worse.
By Thierry de Baillon
Version française ici.
It is quite striking to see how much the mass production era still shapes a lot of our behaviors, whether in our relationships to brands or in Enterprise world. From a customer point of view, while conversing more and more with brands around what I consider as a symbolic transaction, we are still mostly considering companies as products and services manufacturers and distributors.
In parallel, “work as value” is still a dominant paradigm in a lot of companies, which, at same time, are trying to implement 2.0, socio-collaborative, tools and platforms to foster knowledge emergence and capitalization. This is strikingly strong in countries like France, where our President said “travailler plus pour gagner plus” (working more to earn more) less than two years ago. Let’s face this, every effort to facilitate Enterprise 2.0 adoption has to take into account, not only structural resistance, but cultural artifacts from a past era.
Most employees have quite effortlessly switched paradigm, from “work as value” to “work as creation of value”, as it relates both to their day-to-day experience as customers and to their expectations in Enterprise world, but managers are facing a bigger challenge, as they are less and less connected with a traditional (pre knowledge economy era) role of managing teams, and expected to consider management as transformation of value. As obvious as this might be, seem from our Enterprise 2.0 heralds’ seats, we have to keep in mind that organizational and behavioral gap: from gatekeepers of business processes, managers must now dynamically harness existing knowledge to transform it into competitive advantages for their company; a tough challenge for most.
Furthermore, while bringing more agility, adoption of collaborative tools and platforms, whether used in the existing framework of business processes or not, allows for a new type of leadership, combining knowledge fostering with social connections facilitation. Managers will now have to catalyze groups and communities activity, involve them in decision-making as well as in maintaining their inner state of equilibrium, acting as the strange attractors of a complex internal ecosystem.
From their real adoption of what is clearly a totally new role, a role which requires more qualities than ever, will depend success or failure of many companies in this new socio-collaborative economy.
By Thierry de Baillon
Version française ici.
Twitter was bruising yesterday about Salesforce announcement of its new application, Chatter. With a product introduced as a “Facebook for the Enterprise” by a representative of the company, Salesforce just confirmed what is becoming an important trend in Enterprise platforms: real-time collaboration.
For a long time, the only asynchronous tool used by companies was email, and one of the challenges of Enterprise 2.0 adoption was in helping people getting used of new asynchronous tools like wikis, blogs, bookmarking or tagging platforms, placing them in conditions to deal with knowledge exchange and serendipity values. In parallel, generalization of the Blackberry is putting email back into pseudo-synchronous mode, instant messaging applications penetration rate in companies is about 40%, according to Gartner, and Google Wave is pointing another real-time head into the game. The point, of course, is no more about discussing whether synchronous tools will be part or not of our new toolboxes. They will, for sure, but are they worth the hype?
The Facebook analogy used by Salesforce is indeed indicative of the direction main platform vendors are today heading to; something like “hey, Facebook works as hell, wouldn’t you like to be able to have your employees sharing, interacting, poking each other on business matters? 230 milliions users cannot be wrong”. But is really the Social Web a similar playground as Enterprise? Definitely not. Bertrand Duperrin recently insightfully sketched the differences between managing communities and managing business. While both worlds aim to drive flawlessly working communities, companies need a lot more.
Furthermore, these new tools will put emphasis on time as a critical material, weighting in most process-based tasks. While searching increased productivity along these processes, with the help of real-time facilitators, executives will put further pressure on actual organizations, avoiding to face the necessary cultural shift which has yet to happen. Platform vendors’ “real-time” pitch is with no doubt good for (their) business, as executives will certainly jump in the bandwagon, not for Enterprise 2.0.
This new trend will oblige us to be even more cautious when implementing social tools, as we now must deploy two different layers of interaction, and that, along with leadership, decision-making, knowledge and information, time is the new dimension we have to deal with.
By Thierry de Baillon
Version française ici.
Considering that brands are in fact shaped by their customers is anything but new. In 1954, Peter Drucker already wrote:
[Marketing] is the whole business seen from the point of view of its final result, that is, from the customer’s point of view.
The recent frenzy of social media marketing doesn’t say anything but the same, enjoining companies to listen and engage with customers, providing us with a too often over-simplified view of business, where brands and customers seem to be the only players in town. While Enterprise 2.0 is a careful field of many approaches and thoughtful adoption and roll out frameworks, in a number of cases Marketing 2.0 doesn’t appear much more than Advertising 2.0, or Sales 2.0 at its best. Co-creation itself is often reduced at the mass customization level, mitigating customers’ creativity with small scaled processes.
But today’s brands trump any simplistic vision of marketing. They are part of an ecosystem which encompasses both enterprise and customers; they have to deal with complex multi-channel creation and distribution systems where each actor has a capital influence on their perception. François Gossieaux recently wrote an interesting article about the difficulties inherent to brand positioning in our Connected Age.
The disappearing product
One of the most striking aspects of today’s brands is a complete change of an element which was, until recently, at the center of all attentions: the product. Not to tell that the finality of marketing is no more about selling products, and that offering your customers the best ever products is not of uttermost importance; but what we are experiencing today is a shift from products as personification of brands to products as symbol of value exchanged between brands and customers. As customers’ experience take more and more importance in today’s marketing, brands dematerialize themselves.
Typically, two facets of the classical Kapferer’s Brand Identity Prism are now merging, Physical (product based) aspect getting interweaved with the brand’s Personality, as the brand perception is focused, not on static aspects, but on dynamic exchanges between a brand and its customers.
Brands attractors
As brand perception evolves from positional (physical and “moral” aspects of the product) to transactional, the simplistic view of branding as a brand-to-customer relationship seems understandable, but hides in fact an increasing complexity. The “customer-centric” brand is in reality mostly the more or less conscious result of several traction points. Suppliers, partners, manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, delivery, internal and external services, from design to customer support, are all part of the end user experience. Understanding where your brand’s main attractors are, fully preconditions your understanding of the brand perception. Neither it is a matter of controlling the whole chain, nor is it about simple interaction. Branding in a complex world requires a full awareness of positive and negative traction points, as a simple change in any of them might destroy a fragile equilibrium. Changing a supplier might have a tremendous impact on the final product, therefore on your customers experience; staff turnover in a retail point might turn them away… Your brand relies on several traction points. Get to know them. You might not have any possible action on them, but you will at least be able to prevent any negative impact from a change of conditions.
By Thierry de Baillon
Version française ici.
Whichever definition and/or paradigm we are trying to wrap Enterprise 2.0 in, whichever framework we are tempted to fit it in when boarding key departments from enterprise, one of the main challenges we, practitioners, are facing every day, is to find relevant patterns and routines to foster change and facilitate adoption among employees.
Involving marketing people is usually a matter of one-to-one education, accompanying them in the journey from “listening” to “adding value to your customers’ experience”. Implementing large scale collaborative tools require a different approach, usually a mix between selective evangelization and viral facilitation. But, how far does virality live up to its promises?
The downside of virality
Basically, virality relies on two pre-requisites: a propitious ground, whether it be a shared comprehension of the objectives or a strong sense of community, and a well-defined adoption program. If (and only if, remember that you cannot plan virality, you can at best sustain it) adoption takes off, most people will build their collaborative behavior from observation of a few early adopters or evangelists, triggering a lot of mimesis among participants. Paradoxally, successful viral adoption may lead to misuse of tools or misbehavior.
Early adopters and evangelists have to be carefully chosen to trigger the right behaviors among other people. Alas, the qualities involved in community activity are usually not the very same needed to drive adoption. Moreover, mimesis is often a blindfold, and, in most cases, people will not be able to discriminate a correct behavior, in accordance to their role, from the one induced by early adopters, before the late stage of adoption.
Not to say that virality is a useless factor in Enterprise 2.0 adoption, but in such a closed system, the expected exponential results of virality take the typical S-shape of an innovation adoption curve; the individuals able to induce a different behaviors to community members and to align community roles with business objectives might well be among late adopters, thus leaving a flock of users clueless about real value of Enterprise 2.0.
A fractal perspective
Businesses are complex, dynamic and non-linear systems. Interweaving social tools into such systems require much more than virality. Aligning collaborative practices with business objectives require new social processes to foster decision taking and emergence of consensus in non-deterministic way. At pilot or department level, 2.0 initiatives usually succeed due to the impulsion of a few individuals, but this kind of approach usually doesn’t scale well. Among factors to take into account are corporate culture, meaningful organizational patterns, interactions between every stage of the value chain,… and the need to provide individuals with empowering micro-processes.
From many points, Enterprise 2.0 structure might be helpfully viewed as a fractal structure: recognizable, scalable interaction patterns, instable equilibrium state, complex and quite unpredictable output. In this perspective, how could fractals help us facilitate adoption and maximize value?
- Fractal patterns are scale-independent. Better than relying on early adopters and evangelists, we should try to enroll key actors (managers, facilitators, support functions…) as soon as possible, letting other employees arrange and model their interaction according to these pre-existing business patterns. “Setting clear objectives” is nothing else but implementing otherwise successful patterns into 2.0 initiatives.
- This same scale invariance could help dealing with difficulties inherent to organizational change. Enterprise 2.0 adoption is not only taking what works at some level to evangelize broader initiatives. It is about implementing these same successful features at different level.
- At individual level, the need for micro-processes, or social routines, is easily understood as requested by scale invariance. People should get, inside communities, the very same capabilities and roles the department they belong to has inside the company’s value chain.
- Fractal systems are also characterized by existence of strange attractors, which maintain global equilibrium. Changing little parameters may lead to a totally different state. This is an interesting analogy with the management of internal communities. Raising the necessary consensus is not a role-based process, but rather a practice-based one, which positively accounts for more instability, thus more innovation.
Looking at Enterprise 2.0 adoption and value from a complex system perspective gives us interesting insights on the necessary culture shift to undertake and might provide us with a roadmap to successfully implement and scale initiatives while maximizing a company’s competitive advantages.
By Thierry de Baillon
Version française ici.
Co-creation is to enterprise 2.0 what “mass customization” is to marketing 2.0: not the Holy Grail, since it is definitely not a delegation of responsibilities, but a breakthrough approach to enterprise governance. Think about it as a way to inject a company or brand’s ecosystem’s output inside their internal processes, resulting in a Moebius band like value chain, each iteration providing value by itself, independently of the process involved.
More than with any other 2.0 internal initiatives, setting up the scene for co-creation needs a cultural shift to happen; fostering the right behavior challenges a lot of corporate attitudes, focusing on continuous innovation and persistent interaction.
Co-creation is not about control, but about persistence of a vision
Co-creation is neither crowd sourcing, nor focus groups. Involving partners, suppliers or clients into co-creation, means that you will have to accept losing control on some of your assets to trigger innovation or improvement. On the other side, you will need to share a consistent vision of what you want to achieve and provide a clear framework to your goals. Do not change the rules of the game in the middle of the road; if you intend to reward the best contributions with money, tell it from the beginning. Since co-creation won’t fit into your existing business processes, you have to integrate its output into a larger sketch.
Expect the unexpected
Zen focuses on the gesture rather than on the goal. You will need to perfect your platform and the way you interact, without trying to drive the output of your initiative. True innovation is disruptive per nature; you won’t be able to seize it if you pave the way before proceeding. Embrace the unexpected as the best way to trigger new solutions to known problems.
Forget your strengths, expose your weaknesses
Fear of competitors is a fierce brake put on your co-creation efforts, as you are here to make up for your weaknesses. A co-creation platform is the less adequate place to pitch your competitive advantages. Humility is key.
You will get as much as you give
The more you give, the more you will get. This looks like obvious, but think about the need for dismiss control; how many businesses are today ready to publicly expose so-called “sensitive” data or jealously crafted processes? Procter & Gamble now famous Connect + Develop website is a perfect example of a successful open innovation platform which leverages reciprocity. Giving is not giving, anyway. As Marcel Mauss exposed in “The Gift”, exchange of goods always has a symbolic dimension which goes far beyond the simple act of freely giving up a property. While giving, the deep ownership of gifts remains property of the owner, and cannot be redeemed unless a counter-gift is made. The behavioral nature of exchanges without market is an inherent part of co-creation initiatives. You are not creating a marketplace, even if you reward the submissions; you are in fact creating a value process.
Avoid destruction
The nature of co-creation could easily lead to destruction of value, either by entering too deeply into the exchange process (internal destruction), or by ignoring creative inputs apparently too far away from your expectations. A consistent vision should avoid you the first possibility. Keep in mind that disruption is not destruction, but another angle to consider known assets. Always consider positively any input, no matter how destructive it might look at first glance; just consider it from a different angle.
Keep the shortest path from ear to mouth
As a last bit of advice, report as frequently as you can. Inform the whole company about your initiative progresses, as internal resources are also part of the co-creation process. Engage and inform your external stakeholders, as they are now part of your business processes.
By Thierry de Baillon
English version here.
La co-création est à l’Entreprise 2.0 ce que la “customisation de masse” est au marketing 2.0 : non le Saint Graal, puisque ce n’est en aucun cas une délégation der responsabilités, mais une approche remettant en cause la gouvernance de l’entreprise. Imaginez la production de l’écosystème d’une entreprise ou d’une marque réinjectée dans ses processus internes, pour obtenir une chaîne de valeur en forme d’anneau de Moebius, chaque itération produisant de la valeur intrinsèque, indépendamment du processus impliqué.
Davantage que pour toute autre initiative 2.0, mettre en place une démarche de co-création nécessite un véritable changement culturel : faire naître les comportements idoines challenge beaucoup d’attitudes internes, met l’accent sur l’innovation continue et une interaction soutenue.
Il ne s’agit pas de contrôle, mais de persistance d’une vision
La co-création n’est ni une forme de crowdsourcing, ni la formation de groupes d’intérêt. Impliquer des partenaires, des fournisseurs ou des clients dans une telle démarche implique que vous acceptiez de perdre le contrôle sur certains de vos acquis, pour y apporter de l’innovation ou de l’amélioration. D’un autre côté, il sera nécessaire d’exprimer une vision claire de ce que cherchez à obtenir, et donner un cadre consistant à vos objectifs. Ne changez pas les règles du jeu en cours de route ; si vous souhaitez récompenser pécuniairement les meilleures contributions, annoncez-le dès le départ. La co-création ne s’intégrant pas dans vos processus métiers existants, vous devrez intégrer ses résultats dans un cadre plus large.
Attendez-vous à l’inattendu
Le Zen est l’art de se concentrer sur le geste plutôt que sur l’objectif. Vous devrez perfectionner votre plateforme et votre manière d’interagir, sans essayer de manipuler les résultats de votre initiative. La véritable innovation est disruptive par nature, vous ne serez pas en mesure de la saisir si vous balisez votre route avant le départ. Considérez et acceptez l’inattendu en tant que meilleur moyen de donner de nouvelles solutions à de vieux problèmes.
Oubliez vos forces, exposez vos faiblesses
La peur des entreprises compétitrices est un frein majeur à tous vos efforts de co-création, puisque vous êtes ici pour compenser vos faiblesses. Une plateforme de co-création est le pire endroit où placer votre discours sur vos avantages compétitifs. L’humilité est de rigueur.
Vous obtiendrez ce que vous donnerez
Plus vous donnerez, plus vous obtiendrez. Cela semble évident, mais réfléchissez à la nécessité de renoncer à tout contrôler ; combiend ‘entreprises sont-elles aujourd’hui prêtes à exposer publiquement leurs soit-disant données « sensibles » ou leurs processus, jalousement optimisés ? Le célèbre site Connect + Develop de Procter & Gamble est le parfait exemple d’une plateforme d’innovation qui met en valeur la réciprocité. Ainsi que l’exposait Marcel Mauss dans « le Don », l’échange de biens possède toujours une valeur symbolique, bien au-delà du simple acte de renoncement à une propriété. Lors du don, la propriété profonde des objets ou valeurs échangées reste propriété du donneur, et ne peut être annulée tant qu’un cotnre-don n’est pas effectué. La nature comportementale des échanges sans marché est un aspect inhérent des initiatives de co-création. Vous ne créez pas une place de marché, même en rémunérant les idées soumises ; vous créez en fait un processus d’échange de valeurs.
Evitez la destruction
La nature de la co-création peut aisément mener à la destruction de valeur, soit en entrant trop profondément dans le processus d’échange (destruction interne), soit en ignorant les propositions créatives a priori trop éloignées de vos attentes. Une vision claire doit vous permettre d’éviter le premier cas. Conservez à l’esprit le fait que disruption n’est pas destruction, mais un autre angle sous lequel considérer des acquis connus. Considérez chaque proposition de manière positive, quelle que soit son apparence destructrice ; considérez-la simplement sous un autre angle.
Suivez le plus court chemin de l’oreille à la bouche
Dernier conseil, rapportez aussi souvent que vous le pouvez. Informez l’entreprise toute entière des progrès de votre initiative, les ressources internes font également partie du processus de co-création. Impliquez et informez vos partenaires externes, ils font maintenant partie intégrante de vos processus business.
By Thierry de Baillon
Version française ici.
While social media is slowly earning a place inside companies, they still have none or very little impact on the rigid business processes of the enterprise. A major cultural change, along with deep redesign of corporate governance and internal working, are needed. Ironically, the seeds which might nurture the organic development and integration of networks and social tools were present in the model Philip Crosby took when he wrote Quality is Free in 1979, setting the basis for most of present processes: the Japanese concept of Kaizen.
Back in the eighties, when the principles of a quality managed enterprise emerged, US companies were outperformed by Japanese ones, whether in creativity, innovation or quality. Learning from the Japanese approach to management seemed the best way to revamp Western companies, and the Total Quality Management system took every sector of the economy by storm. These revolutionary principles soon turned into processes and certifications, with the rise of the CMMI model, followed by ISO 9001 series of norms. The modern, predictive and productive enterprise was set up.
A 25 years old misunderstanding
While the principles of constant amelioration are at the heart of the Kaizen concept and philosophy, some crucial aspects were completely left over by occidental theorists, most of them inherent to the Japanese psychology.
Doing the right thing. Honesty and transparency matter, of course, but also the sense of being at the heart of processes and implicitly acting in the right direction. The human factor is what powers the enterprise, not the procedures.
Amelioration through participation, and constant innovation. First time I assisted a meeting in Japan, I was stroke by its apparent ineffectiveness. Everybody was discussing and questioning every point, going through the process again until a consensus emerge. But, most surprising to me at that time (1981), it did emerge each time, or was induced by a manager.
Kaizen is part of Zen. Zen tells us not to focus on results, but on the act of doing. By improving the way you manage a task, you obtain better results.
Valeria Maltoni recently gave insightful advices for bloggers, based on Kaizen principles. Sadly enough, most of the barriers which prevent us to easily adopt Enterprise 2.0 concepts come from a misunderstanding.
Where should we go from now?
Take a look at the above illustrations. It is no rocket science to see they don’t fit. The first one is the picture of a typical business process workflow, while the second illustrates a small network activity. To go any further, we now need to get back at the roots of the quality driven enterprise, and, one step at a time, redesign the processes with the help of social media. By looking back to the implications of Kaizen into enterprise, and how social media organically fits into it, we will correct a 25 years misunderstanding. Kaizen IS Enterprise 2.0.
By Thierry de Baillon
English version here.
Bien que les médias sociaux gagnent lentement leur place en entreprise, ils n’ont encore que peu ou pas d’impact réel sur les rigides process business qui président à leur fonctionnement. Un changement culturel majeur, ainsi qu’une reconception de la gouvernance d’entreprise et de son fonctionnement interne, y sont nécessaires. Ironiquement, les graines qui permettraient d’ensemencer le développement organique et l’intégration des réseaux et outils sociaux en entreprise étaient présentes dans le modèle dont s’est inspiré Philip Crosby en 1979, lorsqu’il écrivit Quality is Free, jetant les bases de la plupart de nos process actuels : le concept japonais du Kaizne.
Pendant les années 80, lorsqu’émergea le principe d’une entreprise gérée par la qualité, les entreprises américaines étaient largement dépassées par les japonaises, tant dans le domaine de la créativité que dans ceux de l’innovation ou de la qualité. Tirer la leçon de l’approche japonaise du management sembla être la meilleure solution pour tirer les entreprises occidentales du marasme, et les principes du Management par la Qualité Totale prirent d’assaut tous les secteurs de l’économie. Ces principes révolutionnaires furent rapidement transformés en processus, avec l’apparition du modèle CMMI, puis celle de la série de normes ISO 9001. L’entreprise moderne, prévisible et productive, était née.
Un quiproquo de 25 ans
Bien que les principes de l’amélioration continue soient au cœur du concept et de la philosophie Kaizen, certains aspects cruciaux furent entièrement laissés de côté par les théoriciens occidentaux, la plupart d’entre eux indissociables de la psychologie japonaise.
Faire ce qui semble juste. L’honnêteté et la transparence sont importantes, bien sûr, mais plus encore le sens d’être au cœur des processus et d’agir implicitement dans la bonne direction. C’est le facteur humain qui fait fonctionner l’entreprise, et non les procédures.
L’amélioration à travers la collaboration, et l’innovation continue. Lorsque j’assistai pour la première fois à une réunion de travail au Japon, je fus frappé par son apparente inefficacité. Tout le monde discutait tout et mettait tout en question, reprenant chaque point depuis le début, jusqu’à ce qu’un consensus émerge. Et, ce qui me surprit le plus à l’époque (1981), fut que ce consensus émergeât à chaque fois, et était au pire amené par un manager.
Le Kaizen est une démarche Zen. Le Zen nous enseigne à ne pas nous focaliser sur les résultats, mais sur les actes eux-mêmes. En améliorant votre manière d’appréhender une tâche, vous en améliorez les résultats.
Valeria Maltoni a récemment donné de judicieux conseils aux blogueurs, en se basant sur les principes du Kaizen. Malheureusement, la plupart des barrières qui, aujourd’hui nous empêchent de facilement mettre en œuvre les concepts de l’Entreprise 2.0 proviennent d’un malentendu.
Quelle direction pour l’avenir ?
Regardez les illustrations ci-dessus. Il n’est pas nécessaire d’être ingénieur pour comprendre que leur association ne fonctionne pas. La première représente le workflow typique d’un process d’entreprise, tandis que la seconde illustre l’activité d’un petit réseau. Pour aller au-delà, nous devons maintenant revenir aux origines de la gestion de l’entreprise par la qualité et, pas à pas, en redesigner les process en y intégrant les médias sociaux. En regardant à nouveau ce qu’implique le Kaizen en entreprise, et la manière dont les médias sociaux s’y intègrent organiquement, nous arriverons à corriger 25 ans de malentendu. Le Kaizen EST l’Entreprise 2.0.
