This is a cross post from the Fast Forward blog. I enjoyed the conversation and wanted to share it here also. Andrew McAfee spoke last Thursday at the Fast Forward Summit in Boston on the topic, A World of Change. Here are my notes with some side comments in (parens). I found out that he was the first blogger at Harvard Business School and that now there are two. He used no powerpoint. He wanted to provide some ideas and then engage in a conversation (this is great – we did this at the Enterprise 2.0 conference on our blogging panel).
Andrew provided a recap of 2008 for him so far in the two parts of his professional life – in the classroom and the outside world – these are very different for him
First, he discussed his course – the informal title is “what every general manager needs to know about IT” – he finds that his students do not want to be CIOs although many have IT background but they do not want to go back there. (I guess the CIO whatabees go to Sloan)
He tells them that one of the biggest mistakes that general managers make is to assume that IT is someone else’s responsibility. He says that they should not leave it up to IT. They need to understand the issues and get involved.
Andrew starts the course with a coverage of classic enterprise systems – he says they are a great way to impose the will of the top executives on the masses – He thought his students would like it since the stereo type of HBS student is someone who thinks they know it all. However, he finds that they actually want to get away from using a managerial heavy hand. The dominant verb in this section is “impose.”
Andrew then switches the class coverage to enterprise 2.0 – these tools are exactly the opposite – these tools allow you to get out of the away and let ideas emerge. The dominant verb in this section is “emerge.” Andrew thought students would find this uncomfortable – he was wrong on both counts – they loved the second one – liked emergence - He likes this outcome as it ends the class on a high note. (I think he knew all along that this would happen or at least he hoped it would, thus the sequence)
The semester ended in April and he has been on the road to talk about enterprise 2.0 every since. Andrew said it has been fun – the trend is positive – there is broad geographic and multi-level support for enterprise 2.0 within many organizations and across industries. (I am seeing this also)
He recently led a panel at Enterprise 2.0 Conference. It included senior people from CIA, Pzifer, Wachovia Bank – all conservative organizations – but they all have dedicated staff toward enterprise 2.0 – at the CIA people using enterprise 2.0 tools are finding new colleagues across silos (we really need for our security) – Prior to the enterprise 2.0 era we had bad tools for collaboration and discovery Euan Semple (former head of KM at BBC) said do you really want to find bad stuff or the right colleague? (Euan writes the excellent blog – The Obvious - I have always found that finding the right person was more valuable that finding the right document) (Here are my notes from Andrew’s panel, Enterprise 2.0 Conference Notes: Reality Check with Andrew McAfee and a summary of my notes from the entire conference, My Enterprise 2.0 2008 Conference Notes)
Andrew was at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government yesterday for an gov 2.0 conference – He had felt government was likely to be behind the times – but actually government may be ahead of the private sector in the use of enterprise 2.0 and web 2.0 tools are cheap and easy to launch – He learned about the DC mayor’s office and the virtual Alabama project.
Andrew closed his opening comments with three issues:
1. Should you be strategic and apply an integrated environment or do a thousand pilots - Andrew sides with the board approach to fully reap benefits of enterprise 2.0 – the interconnections - otherwise you get 1000 siloed walled gardens – Enterprise 2.0 still can be quick for broad implementation. (I agree very strongly. If it is really be enterprise 2.0 there needs to be enterprise consistency. Otherwise you get a lot of disconnected web 2.0 tools. There needs to be connectivity between the enterprise tools. Open APIs can make this happen if done right. There is a role for IT here to provide support so it is not a lot of little disconnected efforts. This is like the early days of intranets, except the tools are more powerful and the stakes are higher.)
2. What are obstacles to implementation? Andrew asked the audience to choose between – technical, managerial, or individual – The people in audience felt that the answer was managerial and that was Andrew’s prior view – The Enterprise 2.0 conference panel all said no – it is new for individuals – there is a lot of inertia as people are used to emails – managers are just as uncomfortable as users but they are not putting up management obstacles – managers need to led by example – they need to say I am not going to use emails on this project - (recognizing this, some vendors have enabled users to interact with their platforms through email) Andrew found that command and control managers are not the obstacle to enterprise 2.0. (While I generally agree we have to remember that this is a biased sample. People whose senior management objects to enterprise 2.0 and the concept of emergence are not as likely to be in the conference and certainly not on this type of panel.)
3. What are the right incentives – how to encourage the new behavior – many are in the trinket school – Andrew likes the shovel from the CIA – a symbol of the new way to find new information. Then there are the anti- trinkets people – they say just give a managerial pat on the back to encourage use. Others say give some cash – others are against this- people will just do it for the money (and stop when the money stops)
Andrew feels that the best answer is to just talk to people about what they are doing and set expectations – if managers pay attention that is the biggest help – and use it themselves
He also cited Bill Marriott’s blog as a great example of senior executive blogging. As he travels around his hotels, he provides blog comments. Bill does not write much but he uses a digital tape recorder – it is transcribed into his blog and his staff adds the sound file as a podcast to show it is really Bill’s words.
During the Q&A session I asked the question. – The tension between impose and emerge has been around for centuries. I imagined John Dewey would be cheering on enterprise 2.0 if he was still around. Andrew at first thought I was speaking about the library system guy – I actually meant Dewey the education reformer who pushed for discovery learning and letting learners learn through emergence. I said the two Deweys might be on opposite sides of the issue. Anyway, I asked if he thought that if he taught his class 40 years ago would he get the same response? In other words are the tools leading the change? or Are the tools enabling people to do something they naturally want to do but were unable to do with prior tools? Andrew agreed with the second option (and so do I – think this is a major reason for the power and potential of the tools. – These tools speak to and enable real needs that existed before the tools.)
Andrew said that we got the tool kit for “impose” during the 90s (in the form of enterprise applications) now we have the tool kit for “emerge” – this is why it is not just hype from the vendors but addressing a real need.
Someone asked if enterprise apps and the new enterprise 2.0 apps will get together – many big enterprise apps are adding enterprise 2.0 – but will they succeed? – Andrew said he had concerns because it against their DNA, which is to impose. (a number of the enterprise 2.0 tools are proving ways to integrate with traditional enterprise applications and a number of the enterprise applications are providing open APIs to facilitate this integration. I think this is a better plan than having the enterprise applications building their own enterprise 2.0 apps)
I was thinking another question but there was not time. All of the discussion about enabling emergence is wonderful and I totally support it, as it is part of my DNA. However, there is another aspect as these tools enable something that rides the boundary of “impose” and “emerge,” that is accountability. The transparency allows senior executives to actually see much better what is going on in their organization and more proactively manage. In one example, XM Radio said that their first on-time and on-budget product launch occurred when they switched to enterprise 2.0. This increased transparency gives senior management an increased opportunity to impose or support. I wonder what Andrew’s perspective would be on this issue. (If he responds on the Fast Forward blgo I will add it here) I am also interested in yours.
Comments