Enterprise 2.0

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Managing personalisation is more important than managing change

2010/02/06 in Enterprise 2.0, Knowledge Worker of the Future, Posterous | 7 comments

Death, taxes, and now, change, are the eternal verities. As I said in another post:

The pace of change has accelerated to the point that everyone’s challenge, from Pre-Boomers and Baby Boomers through Generation Y to Generation Z, is how to cope with significant change over the next ten years. If we are, as some predict, moving to an innovation economy, then it is the ability to adapt that is most important. Those betting their organisation on a generational change will be sadly disappointed as no generation has a monopoly on coping with change.

While the youngest generation (whichever that is at a particular point in time) might have the advantage of coming unencumbered to the new ways of working, every generation has a unfortunate habit of treating what they learnt in their formative years (~24) as dogma once they hit their late 20s. Social research has shown that most people’s interest in novel ideas or experiences peaks around the mid to late 20s. (Tell me your favourite band and cuisine, and I’ll tell you what decade you grew up in.) Or, put another way, 24–28 might have the advantage in a rapidly changing world, but once you grow out the top of that age bracket you’ll find yourself at the disadvantage.

However, as with all gross generalisations, and the exceptions are more interesting than the rule; in this case the commonalities between groups are usually stronger than the differences between them. Research like Forrest’s Groundswell show that its more productive to think in terms of personality types.

I prefer to focus on getting stuff done, and ensuring that each and every stakeholder has the tools and support they need to get their job done. This is not a static thing either, something we do once for each stakeholder, as someone’s needs and preferences can change month-by-month, week-by-week, day-by-day or even minute-by-minute.

And this is probably the most important mega-trend we’re seeing emerge at the moment: the drive to continually personalise communication/products/services/tools for each and every individual, rather than trying to divide people into coarse-grained, and increasingly unproductive, demographic groups with predefined needs. If you’re managing change, then you’re still thinking in terms of a static work/home environment that needs to be transformed (however regularly). If you’re managing personalisation, then you’re focused on creating a continually optimised environment for all your stakeholders, ensuring that they have the information and tools they need at that moment. Change isn’t an enemy that should be managed—its a tool to help you achieve, and sustain, peak performance.

Posted via web from PEG @ Posterous

Is Generation X/Y/Z irrelevant?

2010/01/14 in Business-Technology, Enterprise 2.0 | 14 comments

Generational distinctions seem to make less and less sense every year. While my grandmother never learnt to drive a car, my mother happily uses a computer and the Internet. Yes, the pace of change has sped up, but it appears that so have we. Age is a very crude factor, and as we shift to increasing personalisation age looks less and less relevant as a driver for change.

Why then do we persist in reporting on how each generations’ habits and predilections will transform the workplace, school or retirement village, when in reality these institutions seem to becoming closer together rather than further apart? Competition in the workplace is the main driver for change, with individuals adopting the tools and techniques they need to get the job done, whatever generation they are from.

There’s been a lot of talk about how the next generation (whichever that happens to be) is going to change the world. We had it with the Greatest Generation. We had it with the Pre-Boomers and Baby Boomers. We had it with Gen X. Now we have it with Gen Y. This might have made sense some time ago, when changes in social mores and practices took longer than a single generation. Change takes time, and if the pressure is only gentle then we can expect significant time to pass before the change is substantial.

I remember my grandmother who never learn’t to drive. Back in the day, before World War II, women driving was not the done thing. My grandmother never learnt to use a video recorder, computer, or the Internet, either. The pressure to change was gentle, and she was happy with her lot.

Sociologists now tell to that the differences between populations is often less than the differences within populations. Or, put another way, on aggregate we’re all pretty much the same. The same is true for my grandmothers. While one never learn’t to drive (among other things), my other grandmother charted a different course. No, she never learnt to use the Internet, but she did take the time when her husband went off to war to learn how to drive, and the both had a bit of a crush on Cary Grant.

If we wizz forward to the present day, then we can see the same dynamics at work. My parents have, in the course of only a few years, leapt from a technology-free zone to the proud owners of laptops, a wireless network, and a passion for doing their own video editing. Even mother-in-law, who has zero experience with technology, bought a Wii recently. She also seems to have more luck with the Wii than her video recorder which she’s never been able to work.

The idea that technology adoption is generational seems to have eroded to the point of irrelevance. There was even a report recently (by Cisco I think, though I can’t find the link) where the researchers could find no significant correlation between new technology adoption and generational strata.

Why then do we persist in pigeon holing generations when it is proven to be counter productive? Not all Gen X’s want to kill themselves. I’m a Gen X, I even like Nirvana, and I’ve yet to have that urge. Not all Gen Y’s want to publish their lives on Facebook. And not all baby boomers want to be helicopter parents. The only accomplishment this type of media story achieves by promoting these stereotypes is to massage the ego of their target demographic. To divide people into generations and say that this generation likes certain tools and techniques, and this generation doesn’t, and will never adapt, is naive.

If we must categorise people, then it makes more sense to use something like NEOs to divide the population into vertical groups based on how we approach life. Do you like change? Do you not? Do you value your privacy? Are you willing to put everything out in public? And so on…

The pace of change has accelerated to the point that everyone’s challenge, from Pre-Boomers and Baby Boomers through to Generation Z, is how to cope with significant change over the next ten year. If we are, as some predict, moving to an innovation economy, then it is the ability to adapt that is most important. Those betting their organisation on a generational change will be sadly disappointed as no generation has a monopoly on coping with change.

A more productive approach is to seek out the people from all generations who thrive in change, and aim for a diverse workforce so that you can tap into the broad range of skills this diversity will provide. Ultimately competition in the workplace is the main determinant for change, with individuals adopting the tools and techniques they need to get the job done, whatever generation they are from.

Updated: Elliot Ross pointed out some interesting research and analysis by Forrester. Forrester coins the term Technographics in their Groundswell work, capture how different people adopt social technologies. There’s even a nice tool which enables you to slice-and-dice the demographics. I’ve added the tool below, and highly recommend taking a look at Forrester’s work.

Updated: Mark Bullen over at Net Gen Skeptic does a nice job of bring some evidence to the debate, with Six reasons to be sceptical.

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A nice visual argument for the value of mash-ups

2009/12/08 in Business-Technology, Enterprise 2.0, Knowledge Worker of the Future, Posterous | No comments

As I’ve mentioned before, I would like a nice, clear, crisp definition for mash-up. A definition which captures the benefits that mash-ups can bring, rather than detailing a collection of tools, technologies and standards that we happen to find interesting at the time. For me, this is the TQM argument of fusing data and process to eliminate unnecessary decisions—make-work or swivel chair integration—to create a more efficient and effective work environment.

It’s Just a Bunch of Stuff That Happens has done a brilliant job of capturing this visually (included below). I like the usability aspect this highlights. A mash-up’s focus is cross-application usability—removing the annoyances of dealing with separate information sources. We could simply take these sources and squish them up against the glass, delivering the content into iGoogle or NetVibes gadgets. But what those original push-pins on a map mash-ups did was improve the usability of these information sources by eliminating the decisions required to navigate across them. Just as Apple did with the iPod and iPhone, eliminating or fusing functions to eliminate the (unnecessary) decisions required to navigate the overly complex and confusing interfaces of the mobile phones that came before them.

iGoogle and NetVibes are the Symbian to a mash-up’s iPhone.

Symplicity

Posted via web from PEG @ Posterous

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The rise of task worker 2.0

2009/11/25 in Business-Technology, Enterprise 2.0, Knowledge Worker of the Future, Posterous | No comments

Companies are delayering (again) and pushing decisions to the surface of the organisation, where there is direct contact with customers and partners, in order to be more responsive. Some companies, Zara for example, are making this into a science as they re-engineer their organisations to maximise agility. To do this companies are empowering the people working at the customer and partner interface to solve the problems in front of them, without intervention from head office or middle management.

One interesting effect of this is a shift in the coalface of Enterprise 2.0 adoption. We’ve been focused on the white collar, office bound knowledge worker as the adopter of Web 2.0 tools in the enterprise, with mobility limited to the ability to work from a local coffee shop or an executive tweeting from the airport lounge. However, with decisions devolving to the customer and partner interface we are finding that the middle layers of our organisations are being trimmed, and their responsibilities transferred to the people with direct customer or operational contact. Knowledge workers are being superseded by task workers: people focused on consuming information in the field to solve operational or customer problems.

Think about how Toyota structures production lines—the whole LEAN story—empowering the people on the shop floor (traditional task workers) to solve problems. Or the utility field worker on maintenance, who used to work under instruction from the depot but is now mobile, working remotely. Or the transactional shop assistant who’s focus is shifting from the financial transaction to customer management. And so on.

To a certain extent, Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0′s traditional target, the white collar knowledge worker, is being eliminated by the very technology that is intended to empower them. And their replacement, the situated task workers, has been ignored by the Enterprise 2.0 rollout. Or, even worse, we’ve deliberately locked down their computing environment to prevent them going off task.

This creates an interesting challenge. How do we move from our early adopters and use our new collaboration tools and technique to support (and not distract) these task workers, situated in a challenging operational environment?

Posted via email from PEG @ Posterous

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We need a better definition for “mash-up”

2009/11/24 in Business-Technology, Enterprise 2.0, Knowledge Worker of the Future, Posterous | 5 comments

Mash-up no longer seems to mean was we thought it meant. The term has been claimed by the analysts and platform vendors as short hand for the current collection of hot product features, and no longer represents the goals and benefits of those original mash-ups that drew our interest. If we want to avoid the hype, firmly tying mash-up to the benefits we saw in those first solutions, then we need to reclaim the term, basing its definition on the outcomes those first mash-up solutions delivered, rather than the (fairly) conventional means used to deliver them.

Definitions are a good thing, as they help keep us all on the same page and make conversations easier. However, what often starts our as a powerful concept—with a clear value proposition—is rapidly diluted as the original definition gets pulled in different directions.

Over time, the foundation of a term’s definition moves from the outcome it represents (and the benefits this outcome provides), taking rest on the means which the original outcome was delivered, driven by everyones’ desire to define what they are doing in relation to the current hot topic. Next, the people who consider it to be just a means, often start redefining the meaning to make it more inclusive, while continuing to claim the original benefits. We end up selling the new hype as either means or goals or any half-hearted solution in between – and missing the original outcome nearly completely. 

The original mash-ups were simple things. Pulling together data from two or more sources to create a new consolidated view. Think push-pins on a map. Previously I would have had to access these data sources separately—find, select, remember, find, select correlation, click. With the mash-up this multi-step, and multi-decision workflow is reduced to a single look, select, click. Many decisions became one, and I was no longer forced to remember intermediate steps or data. 

It was this elimination of unnecessary decisions that first attracted many of us to the idea of a mash-up. As TQM, LEAN, et al tell us, unnecessary decisions are a source of errors. If we want to deliver high quality at a low cost (i.e. efficient and effective knowledge workers) then we need to eliminate these decisions. This helps us become more productive by spending a greater proportion of our time on the decisions that really matter, rather than on messy busy work. Fewer decisions also means fewer chances for mistakes.

Since those original mash-up solutions, our definition of mash-up evolved. Todays definitions are founded on the tools and techniques used to deliver a modern web-based GUI. These definitions focus on the technology standards, where the data is processed (client vs. server), standards and APIs, and even mention application architectures used. Rarely do they talk about the outcome delivered, or the benefits this brings.

There’s little difference, for example, between some mashups and a modern portal. We can debate the differences between aggregating data on the client vs. the server, but does it really matter if it doesn’t change the outcome, and the difference is invisible to the user? The same can be said for the use of standards, APIs used, user configuration options, differing solution architectures and so on.

The shift to a feature-function base definition has allowed the product vendors and analysts of seize control of our definition, and apply it to the next generation of products they would like us to buy. This has diluted the term to the point that it seems to cover much of what we’ve been doing for the last decade, and many of the benefits ascribed to the original mash-ups don’t apply to solutions which fit under this new, broader church.

Modern consumer home pages, such as iGoogle and NetVibes for example, do allow us to use desk and screen real estate more effectively–providing a small productivity boost–but they don’t address the root of the problem. Putting two gadgets on a page does little to fuse the data. The user is still required to scan the CRM and order management gadgets separately, fusing the data in their head.  Find, select, remember, find, select correlation, click rather than a single look, select, click.

The gadgets might be visually proximate, but we could do that with two browser windows. Or two green screens side-by-side. The user is still required to look at both, and establish the correlation themselves. The chair might not swivel as much as with old school portlets, but eyeballs still do, and we are still forcing the user to make unnecessary decisions about data correlation. They don’t deliver that eliminate unnecessary decisions outcome that first attracted us to mash-ups.

The gold standard we need to measure potential mash-ups against is the melding of data used to eliminate unnecessary decisions. This might something visual, like push-pins on a map or markup on an x-ray. Or it might cover tabular data, where different cells in the table are sourced from different back-end systems. (Single customer view generated at the user interface.) If we fuse the data, building new gadgets which pull data attributes and function into one consistent view, then we eliminate these decisions. We can even extend this to function, allowing the user to trigger a workflow or process that make sense in the view they are presented, but with no knowledge of what or where implements the workflow.

We need a definition for mash-ups is that captures this outcome. Something like:

A mash-up is a user interface, or user interface element, that melds data and function from multiple sources to create one single, seamless view of a topic, eliminating unnecessary decisions and actions.

This v0.1 definition provides a nice, terse, strong definition for mash-up which we can hang a number of concrete benefits from.

  • More productive knowledge workers. Our knowledge workers only spend time on the decisions that really matter, rather than on messy busy work, making them more productive.
  • More effective knowledge workers. Fewer decisions mean fewer chances for mistakes, reducing the cost of error recovery and rework resulting in more effective knowledge workers.

Posted via email from PEG @ Posterous

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What are the benefits of a mash-up?

2009/11/19 in Business-Technology, Enterprise 2.0, Knowledge Worker of the Future, Posterous | 1 comment

The original mash-ups were simple things. Solutions like the Chicago Crime and AlertMap pulled together data from two or more sources (maps and crime databases, in the case of Chicago Crime) to create one single view. Previously I would have had to access these data sources separately–find, select, remember, find, correlate, click. With the mash-up this multi-step and multi-decision workflow is reduced to a single look, select, click. Many decisions became one, and I was no longer forced to remember intermediate data.

TQM, LEAN, et al tell us that unnecessary decisions are a source of errors. If we want to deliver high quality at a low cost (i.e. efficient and effective knowledge workers) then we need to eliminate these decisions. This brings a few immediate benefits:

  • More productive knowledge workers. Our knowledge workers only spend time on the decisions that really matter, rather than on messy busy work.
  • More effective knowledge workers. Fewer decisions mean fewer chances for mistakes.
If we were to use mash-ups in this way to simplify key, call centre processes (for example) then we can can translate these two points direct into business benefits:
  • Reduced staff on-boarding costs, cutting training time, and reducing time to competency by providing a simply and more direct workflow, one which leads the call centre operator through the workflow.
  • Reduce call servicing costs, including reduced escalations and improved first call resolution by avoiding mistakes and and ensuing that the operator has all the information required to solve the customer’s problem on hand.
  • Improved staff retention, by allowing them to focus on the customer engagement, rather than soul destroying swivel chair integration.

With a typical call centre agent using six applications per call, this represents a drastic simplification of the call centre work environment.

A third benefit is the decoupling a mash-up creates between presentation and back-end applications. As all user interaction is mediated by the mash-up, there is not direct connection between the data and function provided by a single application, and the work surface the knowledge worker interacts with. This enables us to evolve the UI and back-end separately, allowing us to keep the user interface in sync with business demands while continuing to pursue a separate, and longer cycle consolidation effort to consolidate backend systems to reduce operational costs.

It’s easy to extrapolate these (potential) benefits to other solutions. My favourite is human services, where providing a case worker with the right information at the right time, and removing unnecessary distractions, will result in a material difference in the quality of life for the people under their care. However, these benefits can easily be applied to any high value knowledge work processes, such as logistics exception manager, utility field worker, sales personnel, and so on.

Posted via email from PEG @ Posterous

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The revolution will not be televised

2008/11/17 in Business-Technology, Enterprise 2.0, Knowledge Worker of the Future, Mailing List | 3 comments

Or the importance of being both good and original.

While I’m not a big fan of musicians reworking past hits, I’m beginning to wonder if we should ask Gil Scott-Heron to run up a new version of The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. He made a good point then: that real change comes from the people dealing with the day-to-day challenges, not the people talking about them. His point still holds today. Web 2.0 might be where the buzz is, but the real revolution will emerge from the child care workers, farmers, folk working in Starbucks, and all the other people who live outside the limelight.

There appears to be a disconnect between the technology community—the world of a-list bloggers, venture capital, analysts, (non-)conferences, etc.—and the people who doing real things. The world we technologists live in is not the real world. The real world is people going out and solving problems and trying to keep their head above water, rather than worrying about their blog, twitter, venture funding, or the new-new thing. This is the world that invented micro-credit, where fishermen off the african coast use a mobile phones to find the market price of their cash, and where farmers in Australia are using Web 2.0 (not that they care what it is) to improve their farm management. These people don’t spend their time blogging since they’re too busy trying to improve the world around them. Technology will not change the world on its own; however real people solving real problems will.

We’re all too caught up in the new-new thing. A wise friend of mine often makes the point that we have more technology than we can productively use; perhaps it’s time to take a breather from trying to create the new-new-new thing, look around the world, and see what problems we can solve with the current clutch of technologies we have. The most impressive folk I’ve met in recent years don’t blog, vlog, twitter or spend their time changing their Facebook profile. They’re focused on solving their problems using whatever tools are available.

Mesh Collaboration

Mesh Collaboration

Which I suppose brings me to my point. In a world where we’re all communicating with each other all of the time—the world of mesh collaboration—it’s all to easy to mistake the medium for the message. We get caught up in the sea of snippets floating around us, looking for that idea that will solve our problem and give us a leg up on the competition. What we forget is that our peers and competitors are all swimming in the same sea of information, so the ideas we’re seeing represent best practice at best. The mesh is a great leveler, spreading information evenly like peanut butter over the globe, but don’t expect it to provide you with that insight that will help you stand out from the
crowd.

Another wise friend makes the equally good point that in the mesh it’s not enough to be good: you need to both good and original. The mesh doesn’t help you with original. Original is something that bubbles up when our people in the field struggle with real problems and we give them the time, space, and tools to explore new ways of working.

A great example is the rise in sharity blogs. The technical solution to sharing music files is to create peer-to-peer (P2P) applications—applications, which a minority of internet users use to consume the majority of the available bandwidth. However, P2P is too complicated for many people (involving downloading and installing software, finding a torrent seeds, and learning a new language including terms like torrent seed) and disconnected from the music communities. Most of the music sharing action has moved onto sharity blogs. Using free blogging and file sharing services (such as Blogger and RapidShare, respectively) communities are building archives of music that you can easily download, archives which you can find via a search engines and which are integrated (via links) into the communities and discussions around them. The ease of plugging together a few links lets collectors focus on being original; putting their own spin on the collection they are building, be it out of print albums, obscure artists or genres, or simply whatever they can get their hands on.

What can we learn from this? When we develop our new technology and/or Web 2.0 strategy, we need to remember that what we’re trying to do is provide our team with a new tool to help them do a better job. Deploying Web 2.0 as a new suite of information silos, disconnected from the current work environment, will create yet another touch point for our team members to navigate as they work toward their goals. This detracts from their work, which is what they’re really interested in, resulting in them ignoring the new application as it seems more trouble than it is worth. The mesh is a tool to be used and not an end in itself, and needs to be integrated into and support the existing work environment in a way that makes work easer. This creates the time and space for our employees to explore new ideas and new ways of working, helping them to become both good and original.

Update: Swapped the image of Gil Scott-Heron’s Pieces of Man for an embedded video of The revolution will not be televised, at the excellent suggestion of Judith Ellis.

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