#enterprise2.0

Social business. Social marketing was likely the first wave of social to hit your company. This next revolution promises to change the very way you work and interact with your co-workers.

The idea is simple: the social web empowered us to tap the collective mind of our trusted friends, colleagues, and the world at large. Management experts promise those same tools placed inside your workplace will let you do the same, and more, in the workplace trenches. The result: smarter, more connected employees, better business decisions, and faster innovation.

If only it were that easy.

All too often, that social, collaborative roar of the external world dulls to a barely audible buzz inside the office. What we have here is a hydra-headed problem.

Those same experts who promise a revolution warn that workplace culture, or poorly designed software, or something in the middle, can smother well-intended initiatives before they have a chance to get off the ground. The truth is, there is no magical on/off switch for organizations to operate in a specific way. Social business is, after all, an initiative - a proposal for improvement - and initiatives require more than one kind of support to be successful.  

So what can you do to guarantee a successful social rollout in your company? Here are five steps you should be sure to incorporate into your social plan:

1.  Embrace the same cultural values of the social web

Before any kind of social rollout can be successful, your organization must welcome the open nature of the social web – accepting ideas like free-flow sharing and collaborative ideation. 

2. Understand how and why knowledge sharing is needed in your organization 

Without a clearly defined ask, you're only setting others up to fail. Everyone in the organization must understand what the purpose and goals of the initiative are. 

3. Allot the time and space inside your organization

For this type of initiative is to work, employees need to feel like what they're doing is going to be valued and that it's a part of their priorities - and not a deviation or distraction.

4. Find a tool or technology that enables a culture of sharing and collaboration/conducive behaviors 

Look for tools with functions that enable the certain behaviors you're looking for. You may need to invest in building a unique solution to match your needs but chances are there's a startup out there solving your pain point.

5. Be a champion or rally a group of evangelists to see the initiative through

Once the solution is in place, as leadership or the crusading group set the tone and provide examples. Maybe that means you need to preseed the tool with content and conversations, or maybe it means that you host an onboarding session. 

Good luck, and as always, we’d love to hear your thoughts.

Want more? Here's some extra reading material: Designing Effective Knowledge Networks

"So even though almost every enterprise has special purpose solutions available for collaboration and process management, good old e-mail always ends up being the primary method for both collaboration and processes in the enterprise. This can be called the "enterprise collaboration and process paradox," and is the "dirty little secret" of both collaboration and process execution in the enterprise. Realistically, there doesn't seem to be any way to displace e-mail as the king of collaboration and processes -- or is there?"

The Dark Side Of Enterprise 2.0

From http://andrewonedegree.wordpress.com

Even if HTML 5 is the magic version and delivers so much more in terms of animation and streaming has it actually changed the way in which we use / the web works for us? No…

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As our hardware advances so does our software (though at a slower rate granted) and we as users (be us general public users or business) expect more and more performance and capabilities. So while some of our user requirements do seem to lean us toward a cloud computing way of working, soon our requirements will no doubt swing back the other way (and wont we be repeating the Mainframe and PC story all over again?)

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So let’s start evolving how we use the web properly (not just our habits) but how it is used. The web becomes a communications network and in some ways returns to its roots. We can still use it in the way we are used to, as in we find websites and we view them in a web browser, however, those websites that aren’t just presenting us with some information, or basic shopping facilities, websites that are more “applications”, get themselves installed on the client machine. So think MS Office on the web. Why install on the client? So that the user experience is not restricted by the web architecture, nor the browser, and that “processing loads” are removed from the server and distributed back down to the client PC.

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So the answer is RIAs that use the client processing power and that do not run in the web browser.

Is this available…

Yes it is. Since Microsoft launched its Silverlight platform (which many see only as a competitor to Flash) it has been working towards this type of scenario, where we can maximise the benefits of the PC and the benefits of the web and cloud computing. Silverlight 3 was the first version to deliver an out of the browser experience and this has been taken further with Silverlight 4, with it being able to run as a trusted application on the client machine. Oh it also runs on Mac’s and PCs and if in the browser, any browser…

...

The future then is…

Re-defining the web as a communications network and moving RIAs out of the web browser and down onto the client. By using the web in this fashion we get a truly distributed environment that has the benefits of the web, but also the benefits of the client machine…

via andrewonedegree.wordpress.com

First on your desktop, then in the cloud, finally back to your desktop again. Great post by Andrew Smith on the fate of web applications in the RIA era.

Different categories of collaboration:

Messaging Collaboration: Think of how messages get sent around your organisation. Typically you will use eMail, but messaging collaboration also includes instant messaging and SMS texting for example. This type of collaboration can lead to some rather bad practices – such as multiple large attachments embedded within emails, massive Cc and BCc lists in an email etc.

Content Collaboration: Think of working in a group to put together and create a word document – say a contract or proposal for example. ECM is a great example of a tool within this type of Collaboration,  allowing multiple people to work on single files, providing annotations, and generating multiple versions, all working to get to the goal of a “Published / released” version

Conversation Collaboration: Think conversations you may have between individuals within an organisation – especially those that are spread geographically across the country or the world. You can also lump into this form of Collaboration certain forms of Social media. Tools within this form of collaboration include micro-blogging, blogging, wikis, instant messaging.

Business Process Collaboration: Think people working together within a business process to complete “work”. In essence, true workflow and BPM is a form of collaboration as it brings people / departments / organisations together to complete the workstream. However, you can also collaborate at singular steps within a process to move the process along or deal with exceptions. BPM can pull in other forms of Collaboration quickly at this point – such as messaging, conversation and content – just to process a piece of work more efficiently.

Collaboration Management: Think sharing calendars and workspaces. This type of collaboration is ensuring people are free to collaborate at a particular time.