Launching the ‘Future of Collaborative Enterprise’ Project

By Thierry de Baillon

Version française ici.

Organizations are facing today the most challenging conditions of their history. Turbulent times in economy, geopolitical threats, environmental and societal issues, are setting the stage for what might be the biggest changes since the industrial revolution in the early XIXth century.

At the same time, the rabid evolution of technology allows everyone to connect to everyone and to share information and knowledge with no other limit than the speed of light, creating a full spectrum of new opportunities (as well as, let’s face it, threats) for businesses.

State of the art

But the collaborative enterprise, as an organizational model as well as an operational framework, is still in its infancy. Many of the tools we will use in ten years from now and that will shape our behaviors, in the workplace as well as in our personal life, still do not exist. In this context, trends & buzzwords are over saturating the infosphere. It is often hard to know which trend is authentic, has a potential for business and if it is actionable or not.

It might be time to ask ourselves whether all the noise about Enterprise 2.0, collaboration, social business and so forth were true business opportunities for a company leveraging the different aspects of heralded approaches, or if they were an empty shell resulting from the literature published by the prolific minds of so-called gurus and agile marketers (consulting firms and platform vendors are becoming incredibly clever into packaging their offer) looking for new markets on which to sell both software and methodologies. In other words: Is the collaborative enterprise real or just a concept to justify massive investments in various business fields & applications?

The project

To try better envisioning what will come next, and to better understand the challenges and opportunities rose by the disruptive changes involved today, Frédéric Gilbert and myself are launching the Future of the Collaborative Enterprise project, task which kept me away from blogging for some time.

While surveys and white papers usually depict the state of the art in a domain, what we want to do is sketching possible (probable?) scenarios about what the future of work will look like. What could it look like? How can a company embrace the potential of collaboration? And what are the different challenges that we are facing to make it effective on large scale? Can it work for everyone and how?  Asking these questions we think will allow acting, anticipating & using the potentials of collaborative initiatives.

To get actionable clues, we are interviewing experts and thought leaders from many disciplines around the world, asking them to react on a set of ten questions framing the main aspects of collaboration: organizational structure, change, technology, and information While many more are on the go, you can see who we already interviewed on the project’s website.

Get involved and help us make it happen

Next step is, through design thinking and future thinking methods, to extract patterns and build plausible future scenarios from the gathered material, and then to further challenge thought leaders on societal, cultural and organizational topics in their knowledge and foresight.

Frederic and I, think that it takes more than words & methods to make things happen, and we emphasize on the importance of people and of the authentic will required to make the workplace a better place to be in order to bring this positive energy to our homes.

Harnessing the collective intelligence is an intrinsic part of the Future of Collaborative Enterprise project. All interviews will be published on the project’s Youtube channel and website as they are conducted and transcript, and all material will be published under a Creative Commons license.  We have published the very same set of questions we asked all interviewees onto Quora, and will watch this space for the most insightful answers. You can add your vision there, or send short videos of your answers through the Future of Collaborative Enterprise website’s contact page.

We have also created a Facebook page dedicated to the project, to help you follow its developments, additions and conversations. The more material we will get, the more we will be able to set up the grounds for a truly collaborative enterprise, and to build up an actionable framework to help businesses which want to undergo the path to more value co-creation.

Whether you are consultant, software vendor, business leader, academic researcher or simply want to add your voice to our project, we’re looking forward to understanding the Future of Collaborative Enterprise with you!

Lancement du projet “Future of the Collaborative Enterprise”

By Thierry de Baillon

Organizational Redefinition and the Pocket Calculator

By Thierry de Baillon

Version française ici.

History, we know, is apt to repeat itself, and to foist very old incidents upon us with only a slight change of costume.
George Eliot

New technology is often disruptive, and social technologies make no exception. Today, quite everyone agrees on the necessity to focus on cultural change to help embracing the new behaviors they enable, and there is quite a consensus on the levers which might make the shift happen. Pilots, either as small scale projects or as fox-in-the-henhouse tools, are common practice, and integration into the flow of work is this year’s new black. Those are, in no doubt, pragmatic catalysts for change. But… are we really focusing on the RIGHT change?

And the pocket calculator hit the school system

Pocket calculators were banned from examinations for a long time after being allowed in the classroom. Then, gradually, they made their first official appearance as digital replacement for arithmetical and other mathematical tables. In accordance to Moore’s law, the power of calculators grew rapidly, and the school system began to foresee much larger applications for these devices.

In France, an official document officialized the use of any type of pocket calculator -even programmable ones- in 1986. Furthermore, their use was largely encouraged during mathematical classes. But the interesting part isn’t the fact that teachers recognized the benefits of the technology and further promoted them (‘adoption’ and ‘empowerment’ might sound familiar to you), it is what these benefits were intended to be. A new version of the document, still applicable today, was published in 1999, explicitly setting the purpose of calculators’ use. Translating from French:

Mastering the use of calculators use represents an important goal in every student’s training, as it constitutes an effective tool to be used in their education and during their professional, economic and social life. For these reasons, their use is planned in many teaching programs and should be widely accepted during examinations and competitive exams.

In other words, calculators’ mastery is now required because of the way they allow faster and more sophisticated calculation, and are a good introduction to man-to-machine language. Wow… Where we could free students from tedious tasks to focus on higher level concepts, leading to a different mathematical culture, what we got is mathematics-as-usual on steroids, and a focus on technology.

Redefining organizations

For more than a century, our economies has been based on a paradigm where profit derived from production of goods and accumulation of assets, and where offer-and-demand markets where the only measure of customers’ satisfaction. Today’s globalization has displaced production toward less costly countries, and it won’t be long before intellectual production follows manufacturing of goods. What can be replicated, it can be outsourced. Markets reveal the internal complexity of interactions between capital, capabilities and irrational considerations. Uncertainty has replaced growth, and there is a growing and unsustainable chasm between the civil society and big corporations pursuing their own goals.

In this context, unleashing the power of horizontal networking inside and across organizations represents a promising answer to some of the toughest challenges our companies, and, beyond them, our society, are facing today. Businesses must repurpose themselves, and adapting to these challenges means acknowledging that work, as a set of activities, is changing nature, and that organizations must redefine themselves.

This shift is already happening on the public web: Clay Shirky, and others, have shown how social technologies foster resilience and creativity, and allow the connective tissue of our societies to take back their central role in human life. Alas, on enterprise side, what we are seeing is mostly the use of these technologies to enforce work as usual, the change we are calling for is too often a desperate chase to more productivity and efficiency. As history tends to repeat itself, social technologies are the new pocket calculator.

Sandboxes, not pilots

What is the purpose of an Enterprise 2.0 pilot project? The no thrill answer is obvious: they are set up to facilitate the diffusion of Enterprise 2.0 practices into the organizational culture, and to demonstrate business value. They allow, often through trial-and-error iterations, to blend the impact of social technologies into the operational structure of a company. They are not meant to help redefining the nature of work by fostering new behaviors, they are instead meant to leverage these behaviors to enhance the way work is presently done. The numerous experts talking about implementing social technologies “in the flow” don’t say anything different.

Social technologies DO HAVE business value, indeed, and that value is far more important than the transitory productivity gains that many tend to highlight. Most of the problems businesses tackle today are way too complex to be addressed the way companies are run today. Networked communities are better armed to deal with wicked problems than any leader, no matter how insightful or visionary he could be. In that sense, Steve Job’s resignation from Apple is highly symbolic: it somehow marks the end of an era, the one of lonesome visionary leaders.

Rather than thinking in terms of pilots, it is time to open sandboxes throughout organizations. Time to allow open, free-willing individuals to gather around real business problems, whether they are financial, strategic or organizational, and to let them probe and discuss how they could solve them. Here lies the real power of social technologies. Empowering employees is not about giving them more tools or putting higher performance expectations on them. It is about opening up what really matters, and giving them the power to influence the destiny of the company they are working in.

With big data comes big challenges

Integration is another social business buzzword on these days. Integration into work, integration into our systems’ architecture. This is, of course, a view suitable to a finite world, where most of business activities and outcomes can be stored into a system of record, and correspond to our process-based neo-industrial organizations. Here too, social technologies suffer from the pocket calculator syndrome. But companies can no longer ignore the outside world, and the necessity to take account of your customers in core business practices will radically change the nature of work and our reliance on today’s IT architectures.

We are only seeing the beginning of an era where data, and the way it flows freely in real time, relegate systems of records into the dark age. Social CRM is setting the basis for a future where interpreting and inferring patterns from customers’ interactions will become an important part of work. Handling and interpreting big data meaningfully will come with more uncertainty and complexity than today’s IT architecture can cope with, and will require changing most of today’s assumptions about how we deal with technology.

As an example, consider the evolution of weather forecasting. The more powerful the models are, the less precise they become. Among the characteristics of complex systems is that their evolution can only be predicted if the original set of conditions is known. The more parameters we introduce, the more precise we have to be in order to get coherent results.

A lesson from history

Pocket calculators, in France at least, changed the way mathematics are taught, but not in the right way, and didn’t change the essence what is taught in courses. Social technologies have a similar power to seed and sustain an inevitable change in work requirements and organizational redefinition. Let us just be sure that history won’t repeat itself.

Tackling Complexity and Wicked Problems with Design Thinking

By Thierry de Baillon

Version française ici.

This post is the second of a two-parts article on design thinking co-written with Ralph-Christian Ohr (@ralph_ohr). You can read first part here.

The world we live in becomes increasingly complex. Complex systems in different areas of our life, such as business, environment, economy etc. involve ever larger numbers of interacting elements. Particularly human interactions are non-linear and result in a basically unpredictable system behavior. One major consequence of complexity is the fact that we have to deal with rising problem wickedness. Ted Cadsby remarks in an interesting post:

“The hallmark of a wicked problem is that it cannot be reduced to a single-cause explanation. Complexity arises from the interconnections between things – how parts within a system interact via intricate feedback mechanisms. The information signals we need to make sense of complex things are buried in a lot of noise, and we, unfortunately, are not adept at digging for cues. We have been conditioned by thousands of years of evolution, as well as our daily routines, to draw speedy conclusions by picking out simple, linear, cause-effect connections. This approach works well with straightforward problems like securing food, shelter and sex, or crossing a busy street. But we are now living in a world where multivariate and non-linear causal connections hide below the surface of our immediate perceptions, and diverge to different possible interpretations.”

Wicked problems are termed as “divergent” as opposed to “convergent” problems. For a so-called ‘tame’ problem, the problem definition is – though it might be very complicated – well understood and promises a solution. The more it is studied, the more various answers sooner or later converge. A divergent problem isn’t well defined and does not promise a solution. The more it is studied, the more people inevitably come to different solutions and interpretations. The process to tackle tame problems is assumed to be fundamentally linear, comprising a sequence of steps leading to a desired outcome / solution. In a complex environment not even a shared problem understanding can be taken for granted. We don’t know what we don’t know.

The question arises how wicked problems, emerging from complex systems, can be properly addressed. We’d like to suggest three ‘pillars’ that seem to be crucial in this context:

Experimentation

Complex contexts and wicked problems require an experimental approach. Because outcomes are unpredictable, decision makers need to focus on an environment from which good things can emerge, rather than trying to bring about predetermined results. This comes along with a tolerance of failure and the ability to refrain from imposing order. It’s essential to let patterns emerge and to determine which ones are convenient. Every experiment exposes new aspects of the problem, leading to further adjustments of the following solution proposal. In place of finding ‘the right solution’, problem understanding and solution must be woven together from beginning to end through explorative iterations.

Diversity and collective intelligence

Wicked problems solving naturally involve a diversity of stakeholders with different perspectives and interpretations. Given that many people care about or have something at stake in how the problem has to be / could be resolved, the process of solving a wicked problem is fundamentally social, and solving a wicked problem is fundamentally a social process. Shared understanding turns out to be a prerequisite for tackling wicked problems. It requires that stakeholders understand each other’s positions to have fruitful exchange about their different viewpoints of the problem – and to leverage collective, holistic, rather than fragmented or individual intelligence, to solve it.

Interpretive approach

A wicked problem usually implies a radical uncertainty, i.e. not simply an inability to predict which of several options will turn out to be the preferred one. No shared problem understanding exists and the context appears so complex that not even the possible outcomes are known. And in the absence of a specified solution, no analytical problem solving can be applied by breaking the problem up into a set of separable parts that can be assigned to different specialists. According to Lester and Piore (“Innovation – The Missing Dimension”), an interpretive approach is indicated in this case. This approach doesn’t target at solving problems or negotiating between contending interests, but at initiating and guiding conversations among individuals and groups. Involved people work through ambiguity and construct shared meaning. Through that process the participants come to understand each other – and themselves – better than before. It’s an open-ended process allowing insights and novelty to emerge.

The distinction between analytical and interpretive approach determines two different ways of understanding teams:

• Analytical perspective: teams are formed and re-formed of different members with particular competencies required,
• Interpretive perspective: teams can be organic groups that develop their own language and understanding over time and become greater than the sum of their competencies.

These ‘pillars’ get back to the constituting elements of a complex adaptive Design Thinking framework, outlined in the first part of this post.

Complexity doesn’t nullify present business models and processes, but it taints more and more of their effectiveness and relevance. In order to be prepared to face increased wickedness and complexity, organizations need to make sure to implement those pillars. Leadership is required to set directions, rather than goals, and to facilitate a culture where experimentation, ambiguity and uncertainty tolerance are valued.

This ambiguity should be reflected in the organizational design itself, as wicked problems often arise “on the edge”. Even if disconnected to main business operations, dedicated spaces need to be created for collaboration, empathy and conversation. Those spaces allow for transformation of diverse, subjective perspectives into collective insight and understanding. Furthermore, it’s mandatory to educate and hire appropriate people, being capable of following this approach and of unfolding their potential in such a collaborative environment.

Takeaway:

Increased complexity requires a transformation in the way we approach problems. While conventional problem solving is highly analytical, resolving wicked problems can be tackled by a design-oriented approach. Through combining experimentation, diversity and interpretive collaboration, subjectivity of individual stakeholders can be transformed into shared insight. Design Thinking based on these elements has true potential to be leveraged as social framework to utilize collective intelligence.

Affronter la complexité et les problèmes irréductibles avec le Design Thinking

By Thierry de Baillon

English version here.

Ce billet est la seconde partie d’un article sur le Design Thinking co-écrit avec Ralph-Christian Ohr (@ralph_ohr). Vous pouvez en lire la première partie ici.

Note préliminaire: le français n’offre pas de traduction satisfaisante pour le terme «wicked problem», tel que défini par Horst Rittel. Certains auteurs proposent «problème tortueux» ou «problème faiblement structuré». Mais le premier est trop uni-dimensionnel, et le second présuppose une approche «classique», reposant sur une recherche de structure, des problèmes. Je leur préfère la notion de «problème irréductible», qui me semble plus proche du sens original (pensez aux «irréductibles Gaulois» d’Astérix).

Le monde dans lequel nous vivons devient de plus en plus complexe. Dans différents domaines de notre vie, tels que le business, l’environnement, l’économie, etc, des systèmes complexes impliquent un nombre toujours plus importants d’éléments en interaction. Les interactions humaines, en particulier, sont non-linéaires et résultent en des comportements littéralement imprévisibles. Une des conséquences majeures de cette complexité est que nous devons faire face à des problèmes de plus en plus irréductibles. Dans un billet intéressant, Ted Cadsby remarque que (je traduis):

«La caractéristique d’un problème irréductible est qu’il ne peut être réduit à la résolution d’une cause unique. La complexité naît de l’interaction entre les choses: la manière dont les parties d’un système interagissent à travers des mécanismes de feedback sophistiqués. Les signaux dont nous avons besoin pour donner du sens sont enfouis sous le bruit, et, malheureusement, nous ne sommes pas doués pour la chasse aux indices. Nous avons été conditionnés, tant par des milliers d’années d’évolution que par nos routines quotidiennes, à tirer des conclusions rapides en sélectionnant des relations de cause à effet simples et linéaires. Cette approche fonctionne bien avec des problèmes simples tels qu’assurer le gîte, le couvert et le sexe, ou traverser une rue animée. Mais nous vivons maintenant dans un monde où des causalités à multiples variables et non linéaires se cachent sous la surface de nos perceptions immédiates, et divergent vers différentes interprétations possibles».

Les problèmes irréductibles sont qualifiés de «divergents» en opposition aux problèmes «convergents». La définition d’un problème «domestique» («tame» en anglais), même très compliqué est: bien compris et offrant une solution. Plus on l’étudie, plus les diverses solutions convergent, tôt ou tard. Un problème divergent n’est pas bien défini et n’offre pas forcément de solution. Plus il est étudié, et plus les gens aboutissent inévitablement à des solutions et des interprétations différentes. Le processus de résolution d’un problème domestique est supposée être fondamentalement linéaire, comprenant une succession d’étapes aboutissant à une solution ou une issue souhaitée. Dans un environnement complexe, même la compréhension commune d’un problème ne peut être considérée comme acquise. Nous ne connaissons pas ce que nous ne connaissons pas.

La question se pose de savoir comment aborder de tels problèmes irréductibles, émergents de systèmes complexes, de manière adéquate. Suggérons trois «piliers» qui semblent cruciaux dans ce contexte:

L’expérimentation

À des contextes complexes et des problèmes irréductibles répond une approche expérimentale. Parce que l’issue est imprévisible, les personnes en charge de prendre des décisions doivent se concentrer sur un environnement duquel de bonnes choses peuvent émerger, plutôt que d’essayer de forcer des résultats prédéfinis. Ceci s’accompagne d’une tolérance pour l’échec et la faculté de se retenir d’imposer l’ordre. Il est essentiel de laisser des motifs émerger et de déterminer lesquels sont utilisables. Chaque expérience dévoile de nouveaux aspects du problème, impliquant des ajustements de la solution proposée. Au lieu de trouver «la bonne solution», il s’agit d’associer étroitement la compréhension du problème et la solution induite depuis le début, et de procéder par explorations successives.

La diversité et l’intelligence collective

Les problèmes irréductibles impliquent naturellement une diversité d’intervenants, chacun avec sa propre perspective et interprétation. Etant donné que beaucoup de monde se sent concerné ou a un avis sur la manière dont le problème doit / peut être résolu, le processus de résolution d’un problème irréductible est fondamentalement social, et résoudre un problème irréductible est fondamentalement un processus social. Une compréhension partagée s’avère être un prérequis pour affronter des problèmes irréductibles. Il est pour cela nécessaire que chaque intervenant comprenne la position des autres afin d’avoir des échanges constructifs à partir de leurs différents points de vue sur le problème; et de mettre à profit l’intelligence collective et holistique, plutôt qu’individuelle et fragmentée, afin de le résoudre.

Une approche interprétative

À problème irréductible correspond en général une incertitude radicale, c’est à dire bien plus que l’incapacité à prédire quelle option, parmi un certain nombre de propositions, s’avèrera préférable. Il n’existe aucune compréhension partagée du problème, et le contexte s’avère si complexe que même les issues possibles sont inconnues. Et en l’absence d’une solution définie, aucune méthode analytique de résolution de problème ne peut s’appliquer en fractionnant le problème en un ensemble d’éléments dissociables qui puissent être confiés à différents spécialistes. Selon Lester et Piore (“Innovation – The Missing Dimension“), une approche interprétative est en cas indiquée. Cette approche ne s’attache pas à résoudre des problèmes ou à négocier entre des intérêts contradictoires, mais à initier et guider des conversations entre des individus et des groupes. Les personnes impliquées se frayent un chemin à travers l’ambiguité et construisent un sens partagé. Au cours de ce processus, les participants apprennent à se connaître les uns les autres, et eux-mêmes, mieux qu’avant. C’est un processus ouvert permettant l’émergence d’insights et de nouveauté.

La distinction entre approche analytique et approche interprétative détermine deux manières différentes de comprendre les équipes:

• Perspective analytique: les équipes sont formées et reformées de différents membres possédant des compétences requises particulières
• Perspective interprétative: les équipes peuvent être des groupes organiques qui développent au fur et à mesure leur propre langage commun et leur propre compréhension, et deviennent plus grands que la somme de leur compétences

Ces «piliers» renvoient aux éléments constitutifs d’une approche complexe et adaptative du Design Thinking, telle qu’esquissée dans la première partie de ce billet:

La complexité ne rend pas caducs les processus et modèles actuels du business, mais affaiblit de plus en plus leur efficacité et leur pertinence. Afin d’être prêtes à affronter la complexité et l’irréductibilité croissantes, les organisations doivent mettre ces piliers en place. Le leadership est nécessaire pour insuffler des directions, plutôt que donner des objectifs, et pour faciliter le développement d’une culture où l’expérimentation, l’ambiguité et la tolérance à l’incertitude sont valorisées.

L’ambiguité devrait être reflétée dans la structure des organisations elle-même, parce que les problèmes irréductibles surviennent souvent «à la marge». Même si déconnectés de la structure opérationnelle principale, des espaces dédiés à la collaboration, à l’empathie et à la conversation doivent être mis en place. Ces espaces permettent la transformation de perspectives différentes, subjectives, en un savoir et une compréhension collectives. De plus, il est indispensable d’éduquer et d’engager des individus appropriés, capables de suivre cette approche et d’exprimer leur potentiel dans un tel environnement collaboratif.

En conclusion:

La complexité croissante requiert une transformation dans notre manière d’aborder les problèmes. Alors que la résolution des problèmes classiques est hautement analytique, résoudre des problèmes irréductibles peut s’apparenter à une approche orientée design. En combinant expérimentation, diversité et collaboration interprétative, la subjectivité des intervenants individuels peut être transmutée and insight partagé. Le Design Thinking, sur la base de ces éléments, offre un réel potentiel en tant qu’approche sociale d’utilisation de l’intelligence collective.

The Two Faces of Social Business

By Thierry de Baillon

Version française ici.

Co-evolution has always played an important role in the history of humankind, specially when it comes to the complex relationships existing between technology and social behaviors. The social tools sweeping over the web and entering at increasing pace into our organizations are no exception. But evolution is neither linear, nor always a positive-sum game. Social business, in its present acceptation of defining a new way to get work done, might actually have reached a crossroad.

“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” This famous quote from Archimedes illustrates the dual nature of technological evolution: while giving a theoretical and scientific framework to the lever, he invented pulley systems allowing the handling of up to then unbelievable weight, but also the catapult, one of the first mass destruction weapons. From invention of fire to nuclear fission, whether it be through disruptive progress or through incremental adaptation, technological innovation has always been a curse as well as a blessing.

Every light comes with a shade

2.0 technologies are no exception. Each day comes with its load of dithyrambic articles about how the social web is transforming our reality, driving empathy, making the world and organizations better places. How cool. How wrong. Social technologies have the potential to transform our world for better, but also for worse. Empathy might turn into hate in a snap, or be actively used in psychological manipulation of crowds and individuals. Every light comes with a shade. I am not talking here about reputation crisis or so-called social media disasters, which repeatedly sustain the content of so many “marketing” blogs, and usually result from unsustainable product positioning or from some employees’ childish behavior, but about a stronger, deeper threat to the social web potential: a call to the dark side of the human mind.

Time to walk the talk

Failing to taking this threat into account, while keeping on focusing on social media blunders to claim that social technologies are transforming the world is not only stupid, but harmful, when the very same attitude enters the business realm.

Tangible evolution of the nature of work, and actual transformation of organizational structure, mostly exist for now in marketing hot air. Things change slowly, and by far require more of a culture switch than simple tools’ adoption. As Mark Tamis judiciously pinned out (in French), Social Business (as now defined by IBM) is in fact much closer to the original definition of Enterprise 2.0 than it is to the collaborative enterprise described by Esteban Kolsky, or to the Wirerarchy envisioned by Jon Husband. Changing the terminology doesn’t make the smoke screen any thinner.

‘Taskization’ of the conversation

Furthermore, tools, like Salesforce Chatter, or more recently Tibbr, are appearing which allow for direct integration of business applications outcomes into social platforms. I am convinced that socialization of business processes is not a meaningful track toward social business, but the real treat stands elsewhere. Tibbr allows people to choose which information they want to receive, and when they want it delivered in the middle of their conversation stream. Although this might (for some) look like a great idea, how de you think such a feature would be used in the vast majority of companies, for which ‘becoming a social business‘ (to quote IBM’s words) merely means throwing tools to employees without relinquishing their traditional command-and-control structure? What would it mean to those businesses focusing on process-based productivity, workforce optimization and costs reduction?

You know the answer: such tools will give managers new opportunities to control their teams’ workflow, in real time, new ways to tie workers to their tasks. In a world where not answering an email ten minutes after receiving it is considered as an error, there won’t be any more excuse not to check outputs from ERP every half an hour. Conversations will turn into more interruptive tasks, empowerment will turn into less self-organization opportunities. The dark side of business exists, it is alive and well.

Social business offers businesses a major opportunity for redefining the nature of work and the structure of companies, freeing knowledge workers from organizational-only pressure and defining a new social contract between customers, workers, firms and their ecosystem. On a dark side, it also gives companies novel ways to enforce business-as-usual and to further exploit the outdated legacy of our industrial era. People-centric or IT-centric, the use of social technologies for enterprise is at a crossroad, and it might be time to face it without self-indulgence.

Les deux visages du social business

By Thierry de Baillon

English version here.

La co-évolution a toujours joué un rôle important dans l’histoire de l’humanité, spécialement lorsque l’on évoque les relations complexes entre technologie et comportements sociaux. Les outils sociaux envahissant le web et s’invitant de plus en plus vite dans nos organisations ne font pas exception. Mais l’évolution n’est ni linéaire, ni toujours un jeu à somme positive. Le social business, dans l’acceptation actuelle de définition d’une nouvelle manière d’effectuer le travail, arrive sans doute à une croisée des chemins.

«Donnez-moi un levier suffisamment long et un point d’appui, et je soulèverai le monde». Cette célèbre citation d’Archimède illustre la double nature de l’évolution technologique: en fournissant une explication théorique et scientifique au levier, il a inventé des systèmes de poulies permettant la manipulation de charges d’un poids jusqu’alors impossible, mais également la catapulte, l’une des premières armes de destruction massive. Depuis l’invention du feu jusqu’à la fission nucléaire, qu’il s’agisse de progrès disruptif ou d’adaptation incrémentale, l’innovation technologique a toujours été autant une malédiction qu’une bénédiction.

Toute médaille a son revers

Les technologies 2.0 ne font pas exception à cette règle. Jour après jour, on peut lire des articles dithyrambiques sur la manière dont le web social est en train de transformer notre réalité, suscitant l’empathie, construisant un monde meilleur et des organisations plus humaines. Comme c’est beau. Et comme c’est faux. Les technologies sociales ont le potentiel de nous aider à construire un monde meilleur, mais également pire. L’empathie peut se transformer en haine en un clin d’oeil, ou servir de catalyseur à la manipulation des foules et des individus. Toute médaille a son revers. Je ne parle pas ici de crises d’e-réputation ou de soi-disant désastres des médias sociaux, qui nourrissent régulièrement tant de blogs «marketing», et résultent la plupart du temps d’un positionnement produit insoutenable ou du comportement infantile de quelques employés, mais d’une menace bien plus forte et bien plus puissante pesant sur le potentiel des médias sociaux: celui d’en appeler au côté obscur de l’esprit humain.

Il est temps de s’y mettre

Ne pas prendre cette menace au sérieux, en persistant à se concentrer sur les maladresses émaillant l’usage des médias sociaux pour claironner que ceux-ci sont en train de transformer le monde est non seulement stupide, mais dommageables, lorsque cette attitude s’applique à l’univers du business.

Une évolution tangible de la nature du travail, et une réelle transformation de la structure des organisations, tout cela n’existe pour l’instant essentiellement que dans le baratin marketing. Les choses changent lentement, et nécessitent bien plus un véritable changement de culture que la simple adoption de nouveaux outils. Comme l’a judicieusement fait remarquer Mark Tamis, le Social Business (tel que le définit maintenant IBM) est en fait bien plus proche de la définition originale de l’Entreprise 2.0 que de l’entreprise collaborative telle que la décrit Esteban Kolsky, ou de la Wirearchie telle que l’entrevoit Jon Husband. Changer de terminologie ne dissipe pas l’écran de fumée.

La «tâchisation» de la conversation

De plus, des outils tels que Salesforce Chatter, ou plus récemment Tibbr, apparaissent, qui permettent l’intégration directe des applications métiers dans les plateformes sociales. Je suis convaincu que la socialisation des processus business n’est pas une direction pertinente à suivre sur le chemin qui mène au social business, mais là n’est pas la véritable menace. Tibbr permet aux gens de choisir les informations qu’ils veulent recevoir, et quand ils souhaitent les recevoir. Bien que cela puisse (pour certains) apparaître comme une superbe idée, comment pensez-vous que cela se traduise en pratique dans la grande majorité des entreprises, dans celles pour lesquelles «devenir une entreprise collaborative» (ce sont les mots-même d’IBM) signifie en gros fournir des outils bruts aux employés sans pour autant renoncer à leur structure traditionnelle, typiquement commande-et-contrôle ? Comment cela serait-il compris par ces entreprises qui concentrent leur stratégie autour de la productivité orientée processus, de l’optimisation de la force de travail et des réductions de coût ?

La réponse, vous la connaissez: de tels outils donneront aux managers de nouveaux moyens pour contrôler leurs équipes, en temps réel, de nouvelles opportunités pour enchaîner les travailleurs à leurs tâches. Dans un monde où ne pas avoir répondu à un email dix minutes après l’avoir reçu est considéré et signifié comme une erreur, vous n’aurez plus d’excuse pour ne pas checker toutes les demi-heures les messages provenant de l’ERP. Les conversations deviendront de nouvelles tâches interruptives, l’»empowerment» dont il est question se traduira en encore moins de possibilités de s’auto-organiser. Le côté obscur du business existe, et il se porte bien.

Le social business offre aux entreprises une opportunité majeure de redéfinir la nature du travail et la structure des organisations, libérant les travailleurs de la pression organisationnelle et définissant un nouveau contrat social entre clients, travailleurs, entreprises et leur écosystème. Du côté obscur, il leur offre également des manières inédites de renforcer le business-as-usual et d’exploiter plus encore l’héritage dépassé de l’ère industrielle. Centrée- individus ou centrée-IT, l’utilisation des technologies sociales se trouve à la croisée des chemins, et il est sans doute temps d’y faire face sans indulgence.

Social Media: Thinking Over Words Meaning

By Thierry de Baillon

Version française ici.

Terminology, as language itself, always had a huge impact on our thinking. Considering the pervasive place social media has taken into our online lives, from mundane Facebook conversations to companies-wide collaborative platforms, including strategies as diverse as Youtube-based marketing campaigns, Social CRM initiatives or open innovation frameworks, it appeared to me interesting to look a bit closely at the words themselves: ‘social media’.

Conversely to Web 2.0, or Enterprise 2.0 (or anything 2.0, as far as it seems), the term ‘social media’ doesn’t have a clear origin to trace back.  Despite that, it appears that everyone knows about it and has a more or less clear (even if not expressible) idea of what it is.  Isn’t ‘social’ about conversation, and ‘media’ about the channels (technologies) that support it? Yes, of course, but meanings are obstinate, so let us listen to what the words themselves have to say.

Social by nature

When writing “Du contrat social” in 1762, Jean-Jacques Rousseau was, after John Locke, theorizing and popularizing the meaning of ‘social’ being the fact of pertaining to a human society as an organized (and beneficial) structure. In this sense, all of our interactions are social. Work, by nature, is social, since implying active interactions inside an organized system.

Symptomatically enough, ‘social’, as in ‘social media’ and most related concepts and tools, seems to relate more legitimately to the ‘outside’ world, where individuals discuss and interact ad libitum, than to enterprise’s world, where its use is even perceived as controversial. It looks like, in executive’s language, the word’s side connotations (of friendliness or of welfare handling) had taken over the deep political and economical implications of the word and of its use. Social CRM, for example, relates to interactions with customers, not to an internal collaborative evolution of CRMs.

Does that really make sense? ‘Social’ is at the heart of our organizations. It isn’t about Facebook. It is about how people interact with each other, how they exchange knowledge, and about the patterns emerging from these knowledge flows. It is the way we manage capabilities, hierarchies, practices, and collaboration. It is the way we drive business and profit. The necessity to deal with the shift needed to cope with a hyper-connected economy, with customers and workers new needs and expectations, cannot be avoided forever, and ‘social’ kept out of the work realm for long.

From media to mediation

Similarly as we underestimate the ‘social’ dimension of ‘social media’, we routinely overestimate its ‘media’ dimension. ‘Media’, as a singular noun, first appeared in 1923, the very same year the first commercial appeared on radio.  Since then, its definition shifted from “a means of conveying something” (the original definition of medium) to “a channel broadcasting information”. Media is not about conversation (a two-way exchange of information), but about one-way diffusion of information. Or even, as McLuhan explained in “Understanding media”, about one-way influence this channel holds on our cognition.

Bill Ives, in his last post, pointed me to Douglas Coupland’s book about McLuhan, and to David Carr’s review. Carr quotes McLuhan: “The global village is a place of very arduous interfaces and very abrasive situations … When people get close together, they get more and more savage.” But is this vision, while striking if we look at individuals as a myriad of broadcasters, still relevant if we stop thinking in terms of pushing information through multi-fragmented channels and instead immerse ourselves in a global conversation?

It is no wonder brands began to think of ‘social media’ as new conveyors for push marketing information the same way they broadcast advertising in most other channels –and many still do-; the ‘media’ word is a testimony to that immature interpretation. But this is a reductionist view of what is really happening online: ‘social media’ have become true multiway channels to mediate exchange of knowledge.

It might be time to consider ‘social media’ (or should we say ‘social channels’) from a true ‘social’ point of view: a disruptive environment where knowledge flows freely, and sets the base for a new economical and political ‘social contract’.

I would love to hear your view about that and, oh yes I am late, I wish you a very very very happy New Year.

Médias sociaux: réflexion sur le sens des mots

By Thierry de Baillon

English version here.

La terminologie, tout comme le langage lui-même, a toujours eu un impact important sur notre pensée. En considérant la place omniprésente que les medias sociaux ont pris dans notre vie en ligne, des conversations entre amis sur Facebook aux plateformes collaboratives déployées à travers les entreprises, en incluant des stratégies aussi diverses que les campagnes de marketing sur Youtube, les initiatives de Social CRM ou les démarches d’open innovation, il m’a semblé intéressant de me pencher un peu plus sur les mots eux-mêmes: «médias sociaux».

Contrairement au Web 2.0 ou à l’Entreprise 2.0 (ou à n’importe quoi 2.0 il me semble), le terme «médias sociaux» n’a aucune origine précise vers laquelle remonter. Malgré cela, il se trouve que tout le monde en a entendu parler et s’en fait une idée plus ou moins claire (même s’il ne sait pas l’exprimer). «Sociaux» ne se rapporte-t-il pas à la conversation, et «médias» aux canaux (technologies) qui la supportent ? Oui, bien entendu, mais le sens est têtu, écoutons donc ce que les mots eux-mêmes ont à nous dire.

Social par nature

En écrivant «Du contrat social» en 1762, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, après John Locke, a théorisé et popularisé le sens de «social» comme se rapportant à une société humaine en tant que structure organisé (et bénéficiant à l’individu). En ce sens, toutes nos interactions sont sociales. Le travail est social par nature, en ce qu’il implique des interactions actives à l’intérieur d’un système organisé.

De façon symptomatique, «social», comme dans «médias sociaux», et comme dans la plupart des outils y concepts qui y sont associés, semblent se rapporter plus légitimement au monde «extérieur», dans lequel les individus discutent et interagissent à l’infini, qu’au monde de l’entreprise, où le mot est même sujet à controverse.  Il semble que, dans le langage des dirigeants, les autres connotations de ce mot (connotations amicales ou de souci du bien-être) ont relégué dans l’ombre les profondes implications politiques et économiques du mot et de son emploi. Le Social CRM, par exemple, se rapporte aux interactions avec les clients, et non à une évolution collaborative des CRMs en interne.

Est-ce vraiment pertinent ? Le «social» est au cœur de nos organisations. Il ne s’agit pas de Facebook. Il s’agit de la manière dont les personnes interagissent les unes avec les autres, dont elles échangent du savoir, de la manière dont des motifs émergent de ces flux de savoir. Il s’agit de la manière dont nous gérons les compétences, la hiérarchie, les pratiques et la collaboration. Il s’agit de la manière dont nous conduisons les affaires et générons du profit. La nécessité d’affronter le changement rendu nécessaire par une économie hyper-connectée, par les nouveaux besoins et attentes, tant des clients que des employés, ne peut être occultée indéfiniment, et le «social» tenu pendant longtemps à l’écart du monde du travail.

Des médias à la médiation

De la même façon que nous sous-estimons la dimension «sociale» des «médias sociaux», nous sous-estimons habituellement la dimension «médias». Le mot «médias», utilisé de façon générique, est apparu pour la première fois en 1923, l’année où fut pour la première fois diffusée une publicité à la radio. Depuis lors, sa définition, de «support de transport de quelque chose» (la définition originale de médium) est devenue «canal de diffusion d’information».  Les médias ne concernent pas la conversation (un échange d’information dans plusieurs sens), mais la diffusion de l’information à sens unique. Ou même, comme l’expliquait McLuhan dans «Comprendre les médias», l’influence à sens unique que ce canal exerce sur notre cognition.

Bill Ives, dans son dernier billet,  m’a dirigé sur le livre de Douglas Coupland sur McLuhan, et sur la critique qu’en a faite David Carr. Carr cite McLuhan (je traduis) : «le village global est le lieu d’interfaces très rugueuses et de situations très abrasives… Là où les gens sont proches les uns des autres, ils deviennent de plus en plus sauvages». Mais cette vision, frappante si nous considérons les individus comme d’innombrables diffuseurs d’information, est-elle toujours pertinente si nous cessons de penser en termes d’information «poussée» à travers des canaux ultra-fragmentés, et nous immergeons au contraire dans une conversation globale ?

Il n’est pas étonnant que les marques ont commencé à investir les médias sociaux en les considérant comme de nouveaux canaux de marketing push, de la même façon qu’elles diffusent de la publicité à travers la plupart des autres canaux – et beaucoup d’entre elles en sont toujours à ce niveau- ; le mot «médias» témoigne de cette interprétation immature. Mais il s’agit d’une vue réductionniste de ce qui se passe réellement sur internet : les «médias sociaux» sont devenus de vrais canaux à multiples sens servant de médiateur à l’échange du savoir.

Il est sans doute temps de considérer les «médias sociaux» (où devrions-nous dire les «canaux sociaux») sous un angle réellement «social»: un environnement disruptif dans lequel le savoir circule librement, et jette les bases d’un nouveau «contrat social» économique et politique.

J’aimerais beaucoup savoir ce que vous en pensez et, bon sang je suis en retard, je vous souhaite une très très très belle nouvelle année.

Have We Yet Integrated Social, Scottie?

By Thierry de Baillon

Version française ici.

Another day, another buzzword… Integration is quite a hot topic on these days of predictions, especially after both David Armano, from Edelman Digital, and Jeremiah Owyang, from Altimer, qualified 2011 as year of social (‘media’ for David, ‘business’ for Jeremiah) integration.

Integrating social into business

As many words, ‘integration’ has quite a few meanings, but they all rely to the fact of ‘getting the part to fit into the whole’. From a business perspective, the matter of integrating ‘social’ into every aspect of companies’ operations is of course a trend we will all see happening one day or another, but I cannot keep from being dubitative about the length of the road 99.9 percent of businesses will have to follow to transform themselves from their present state to truly social businesses. Integration requires parts to exist before they can fit into the whole.

More and more initiatives exist which prove the competitive advantages associated to becoming a social enterprise, and the exponential growth of the social web, where most of customers’ conversations now take place, is now an unavoidable business fact, but the vast majority of organizations still do not get it at all. These are still mainly emergent behaviors. Seriously, heralding 2011 as being the year of social integration amounts to claiming it the year of time travel.

Integrating social into platforms

Integration is also a technology matter. In this context, ‘integrating’ can be helpfully defined as ‘dealing with’. The iPod ‘deals with sound’ so that, when associated to iTunes, it integrates most of the ways we daily interact with sound. The result is a sleek, one-size-fits-all device able to generate the best ever user experience while hiding all internal complexity.  Similarly, Microsoft Excel ‘deals with numbers’ with the single elegant paradigm of a grid.

We all dream of integrated beauties such as Star Trek’s Tricorder, but ‘dealing with’ doesn’t always stands for a great user experience. Another Microsoft product, Word, for long, is a synonym for big bloated piece of software, with many features one doesn’t even want to hear about. In fact, Word ‘deals with words’ in the same way the iPod ‘deals with sound’, which shows that integration is far from being straightforward when it comes to deal with complex concepts. There are so many radically different ways we use words in written documents that no software can seamlessly integrate them.

When it comes to ‘dealing with social’, large platforms tend to look much more like Word than with the iPod or Excel.  Huge sets of collaborative tools clearly do not facilitate collaboration: not even do they facilitate the comprehension of what ‘social’ means. Time will tell if vendors will succeed in developing a new paradigm for collaborative interfaces, but, in that sense, actual toolsets clearly demonstrate a failure in what we can expect from integration.

Nevertheless, we are seeing today technological integration happening much faster than business integration… for better or for worse.

Integrating social into CRM?

Considering the growing importance of the social web, it is not surprising that companies are looking for ways to monitor customers’ activity and interaction beyond engagement in communities. ‘Dealing with [social] customers’ is Social CRM’s ambitious promise. As you have guessed, integration is here too a key concern (or should be); but should we look after integration in this domain?

If I had one prediction to make for 2011, it would be the rise of analytics tools.  Dealing with customers means a lot of data mining and analysis, and most tools are either quite awfully imprecise, like sentiment analysis, or require deep knowledge and heavy hand-tuning, like social network analysis. Add to that the difficulty of tapping into real-time modifications of your customers’ interactions, and you will understand why we need much stronger analytics tools than those available today.

Furthermore, a global understanding of what your customers are talking about is a lame objective. What customers want is a personal experience, at every single point where they choose to interact –or not- with your company. Traditional CRMs are about personalized relationships, and Social CRMs must follow this track, and aim at offering a comprehensive view of individual customers’ interactions.

Unless being able to deliver on such a demanding promise, social CRM integration, from a toolset perspective, is quite nonsense. Whether you start from a collaborative or a CRM platform, present offering will leave you with a gathering of imperfect tools for a less than perfect result.

On the other hand, companies’ needs –and will- to better understand social customers’ behaviors grows rapidly, whether it be to progress toward a more social business, or, more often and prosaically, to ‘traditionally’ increase profit through social channels.  While integrating social into business is still far away, interacting with social customers is a reality most departments are facing today, to reach different goals, following different processes, using different tools. To understand how social business can drive better business, companies need to be able to reach them, they need to feel the way customers now want to get their jobs done better with the help of the goods and services they buy. Social CRM has this power, and, as fuzzy a concept it still is, its integration into business has the potential to change the way most business is done.