Enterprise 2.0 Value Propositions: My Enterprise 2.0 Conference Notes

This is the eight in a series of my notes on the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston, June 14- 17. This post covers the session, Enterprise 2.0 Value Propositions. It is led by Oliver Marks, Sovos Group and ZDNet blogger and Dennis Howlett, Industry Blogger at ZDnet and other places. . Here is the description. My notes follow.

“The promise of Enterprise 2.0, success stories and a constellation of technologies from tiny 2.0 point solutions right up to secure global platforms can all be hard to circumnavigate in order to identify where there is value pertinent for your specific business needs. 
This session will help demystify, discuss common use cases and provide context to help you plan and focus your strategic and tactical thinking.”

Dennis blogs for ZDNet and rarely takes the vendor or consulting view but writes from the user’s perspective.  He is a social psychologist who worked with category A prisoners in the UK (these are rapists, murderers, terrorists) Dennis said it taught him how to deal with difficult people. His degree is in social psychology. I can relate to this as I also have a degree in psychology and near the beginning of my career I worked with geriatric psychotics. Not as intense as the group Dennis worked with but still quite a learning experience on how to deal with difficult people. Oliver said this puts a new spin on the concept of social.

Dennis began with the core value of e20.  There are two sides to the equation. Like email there does not need to have an ROI for social media as a utility. However, most people work to live rather than live to work so they need to see what is in it for them.

Oliver said he works with firms where people are often over burdened. They are looking for simplicity.  Dennis asked if you were faced with an emergency would you tweet or pick up a phone? How do you get people to see the value in a tweet? When people are stressed they will go back to what they know best.  Dennis said that he does not have an issue with the revolutionaries as he is a child of the 60s but firms cannot live in chaos.

Oliver asked about change management. Dennis said the issue is how are you going to manage change management? How will you get organizations to do the change management activities?  There is not a clear answer here

Oliver went on ask about the core value of E20. He feels it is people first and then tools.  Dennis said the missing link in discussions so far is process. He feels that content with context but outside of process is not useful I would agree completely.  He works with SAP so is very process oriented.

If you can embed e20 tools within the sales process then it becomes useful. E20 allows you to do this over such prior tools as IM with transparent, accessible content. This is spot on. I agree completely here. Whenever I saw a successful KM effort, it was embedded in a process.

Oliver said most people are disengaged at work. How do you get them excited about these tools? Dennis said to you have to make it fun. Most people do not see work as fun. Most people are cynical on new tools. You have to show them how the tools will make their job easier.

Oliver asked how do you evoke change management to promote innovation in a company were there is no permission to fail? Dennis said this is hard. At SAP you have permission to fail. Oliver said what about non-tech companies? He said that tech companies make tools that work inside their environment. But this is a problem as other companies are not like them. Dennis said you find simple easy things that work and let it grow from there.

Oliver said that the big problem with free tools is that they can change without consequence or notice. This can leave users high and dry.

Oliver asked what do you do when there are more silos with best of breed e20 tools that do not connect? Dennis said that department selection leads to different tools that are unaware of each other. What do you do?  There is business value in bringing the isolated groups together. Luis Suarez asked how long is this going to take? Dennis said if it takes too long he would not sign a check for this. Luis said this a big problem that we only think in quarters.

Dennis said that if we are honest the only tech company that has lasted two generations is IBM (and they had to reinvent themselves) so we have to be realistic about the short-term needs for survival. 

Dennis said that if you come to him with any attempt of business case he will be more likely to listen than if you come with the email argument of no need for an ROI.  He added that no one really goes back to see if the ROI was realized. It is a sales tool but at least it shows you are looking at business value.

A person asked if the ROI works the same for E20 as it has for the past 20 years. Dennis said no when we are talking about social tools it is very different than ERP. It is not so concrete. It is very different when people talk about their complaints at the water cooler and then put these thoughts in a blog.

Oliver asked how do you get people more innovative? Dennis said he is wary of rewards. He finds the reward that carries the most value is peer recognition over material rewards.  This makes workers happier and those workers are likely to stay. Jaguar in the 1950s had apprentices creating racing cars on their own time at night and wining races because of pride in their company. Dennis said that people are irrational and we need to remember this.  You cannot put this on a balance sheet but maybe we should look more of this to find the value for social tools.

It was asked about tangible balance sheet benefits, Dennis said timesavings. I think this is a problematic unless it is tied to process because what do people do with time saved? It needs to be more tangible to get on the balance sheet. Perhaps that is what Dennis had in mind.  Good session.