#E20S Developing social strategy 2

 

   The second session which resonated with and provoked me was the one on social maturity strategies, ie having a basic strategy is all very well, but this also needs to be tailored according to where the organisation is in its journey.

Again, this gave me a few problems as I don’t believe there is one journey, but I can see how the various challenges which were discussed will be experienced by most organisations implementing 2.0 at some stage.

According to Luis Suarez, most companies go through a stage of initial excitement for those early adopters (weirdos) who are using the new system.  But after about one year, the project reaches a tipping point where the adopters are already using the system and are looking forward to the next big thing; evangelists are thinking about it; but the laggards and luddites still need to be convinced.  So whilst it doesn’t disappear, the project definitely slows down.

You can see this in this SNEP curve (Social Networking Evolution Process – or: Start-up, Neglect, Excitement and Productivity)

 

 

I thought this was really interesting, particularly it’s something I’ve had conversations about recently with a couple of clients as well.

I just talked about the standard change curve, and the slightly more specific Gartner hype cycle, but I think the SNEP model has value too.  However, the hype cycle has particular value as it points out that whilst the original benefits may not be achieved, eventually lesser, but more sustainable outcomes are developed.

From this perspective, it doesn’t matter that much, and may even be useful, that the wave of initial over-optimism has passed.

 

We also had inputs, in a couple of different sessions, from Cordelia Krooss at BASF as well.  BASF have 30000 employees connected -53% of which are collaborators.  Their Community builders facilitate over 2000 communities.  Cordelia uses nSight’s maturity model and described BASF’s journey through test, pilot and introduction phases:

• During the testing phase it was crucial to involve owners, so BASF performed a stakeholder analysis and invited people to join the extended team.  They got buy-in because they asked them to own the solution – on BASF’s network.
• In the pilot phase, involving 1000 users, BASF continued to focus on getting on board the right people – ensuring that experts were involved in communications.   They also focused on digital natives as they instinctively knew how to use the platform and use it for open sharing.
• They’re now at the end of the introduction phase.  This is about balancing the need to cater for business needs and being very individual.  So they come up with general business cases but its hard for employees to see how these can be useful for them.  So Cordelia and her team talk about them rather than BASF Connect – what could be useful in a very individual way.  Then they share best practices with others.  The approach has been so successful that BASF’s advocates naturally promote the tool.
  • Cordelia also made a few points supporting Euan’s perspectives (I think) eg that vision isn’t useful as most employees aren’t interested in it, and that the team has continually been surprised by the benefits people have found from sharing – so there’s a need to be open.
  • I repeat the same point in response – emergence has a role, but you’re going to gain the best benefit by focusing on what you want to achieve – Rawn at least agrees.
  • Strategy doesn’t mean top down.  Cordelia noted that BASF didn’t start with the head quarters – they left this till last, which raised a few eyebrows.  But it sent a really strong signal about them really going global with the approach.  And I fully support this.

 

That explanation sort of worked.  However the journey then progresses into enterprise-wide usage (as if it’s impossible to do things enterprise wide to start) and then onto the more cultural aspects of OD and E2.0 culture where they won’t need to talk about social because it will be part of everything they do.

 

That last point is frankly bizarre and reinforces the unfortunate technology-centric focus at the Enterprise 2.0 Summit here, the Social Business Summit in Milan (despite the change in name), the Social Workplace Conference in the UK and the Enterprise 2.0 Conferences in Boston or Santa Clara.

Why should OD have to wait until the technology piece has been done?  In my presentation in Santa Clara I gave Visa Europe as one example of what I consider to be a very advanced (cultural) Enterprise 2.0 organisation although due to huge, and valid, security concerns don’t use any social technologies at all.  Also see this post: Enterprise 2.0 Summary.

It’s time to tear up the route maps, and see technology as just one of a number of levers that E2.0 organisations can pull.

 

Technorati Tags: Cordelia Krooss,BASF,SNEP,maturity,adoption,social,media,technology,business,enteprise,2.0

 

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Enterprise 2.0 in Europe (and the Enterprise 2.0 Summit)

 

   I didn’t manage to attend either of the Enterprise 2.0 Conferences (Boston or Santa Clara) last year, though I did get to the Social Business Summit in Milan.  As I’ve posted previously, that’s partly because I think work on E2.0 here is catching up with E2.0 there, and so there’s not the same need to travel.

But this post on the forthcoming Enterprise 2.0 Summit in Paris did get me thinking about the differences between in E2.0 adoption between the US and Europe, and within the countries here.

In this post, Bjoern Negelmann suggests that German preference for decentralisation leads to a focus on knowledge sharing between co-workers as the basis for their enterprise 2.0 activities.  In France however, the preference is for social networking leading to a focus on relationships (“the indirect / network effects of being interconnected”).

I think there’s something to this.  Negelmann mentions Hofstede, but you can also see the impacts in the research of Laurent, Trompenaars / Hampden-Turner and the more recent GLOBE study.  For example, the greatest differences in cultural practices between Germany and France in in this, are:

In Group Collectivism Germany 4.0 – France 4.4

Assertiveness Germany 4.6 – France 4.1

• I think you can see from these differences that there will be a preference for relating to enhance collaboration in France (note GLOBE’s assertiveness score is also about confrontation and aggressiveness in relationships).

 

Uncertainty Avoidance Germany 5.2 – France 4.4

Future Orientation Germany 4.3 – France 3.5

• And here, I think you can see that there will be a preference for managing knowledge to mitigate risk in Germany.

 

Negelmann is also correct in suggesting that you can also see the indirect results of these differences, eg through the positive and negative impacts of the France cadre system.

It’s more difficult to work through how Europe differs from the US however.  The US’ scores for in group collectivism are similar to France and its assertiveness more like Germany.  Its scores for uncertainty avoidance are similar to France and its future orientation to Germany.  I’m not sure how this supports differences I’ve seen between Europe and the US, but then I’m not too sure how I’d describe these differences anyway – other than perhaps that the benefits US companies are after seem less clear, or less strategic – eg focusing on saving travel expenses.  It doesn’t help, of course, that, as the differences between France and Germany show, there’s not really any such thing as Europe anyway (leading to Euan Semple to talk about the mystical continent of Yurop at last years’ HR Technology Europe conference).

I wonder if there are more obvious factors at work here, eg the higher proportion of enterprise 2.0 case studies in the US being technology companies than in Europe.  Or compare the costs involved in firing an employee: US – 0 weeks, (UK – 22 weeks,) France – 32 weeks, Germany – 69 weeks.  How do these differences affect the uptake of enterprise 2.0?

 

I’ll have the opportunity to reflect further on these differences at the Enterprise 2.0 Summit in Paris on  - and particularly in this session on social adoption strategies.

Scheduled for: 07.02.2012 / 11:30 - 12:20 Uhr

• Adoption patterns for different scopes, maturity levels and stakeholders
• Challenges along the maturity cycle

In this session social adoption experts discuss the latest insights on successful strategies. The key idea of this session is to distinguish the different adoption patterns for different scopes, maturity levels and stakeholders of the initiative and to give implication on how to successfully realize them.

As introduction note a conclusion of the E20 Meetup on “Implications for the Adoption Strategy” will be presented.

 

I’ll be blogging live from the summit here.

 

In the meantime, you can find videos with speakers at the summit here.

To register, visit here, and use the booking code 20ambassadorji for a 10% discount on the current registration fee.  There are still also some reduced, special prices for ‘consultants’, defined as freelancers and staff members of consulting firms with 20 employees or less.

 

Picture credit: Jason Corsello

Technorati Tags: Enterprise 2.0,social business,Bjoern Negelmann,Summit,Paris,culture,adoption,France,Germany,Europe,Yurop

 

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Social Outcomes in Enterprise 2.0

 

  I’m proposing to speak at this year’s Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston again this Summer.  My focus is still basically the same as in last year’s submission to Boston (which didn’t get through) and Santa Clara (which did).  But this year I’ve submitted three proposals on developing social cultures (as well as one on HR):

• Creating social cultures
• The importance of focusing on social outcomes to enable culture change and 2.0 implementation
• Tailoring 2.0 projects for different social outcomes.

 

I don’t normally like the word ‘culture’ that much, but here I use it very loosely to refer pretty much to everything in a 2.0 implementation that needs to change that isn’t technology!

So in the ‘Creating Social Cultures’ session, in particular, I’d be talking about how organisations can gain the sorts of benefits they’re looking for, and support technology based projects, through changes in people, behaviour and ‘culture’ (to use the title of the session we ran in Santa Clara).  And I don’t want to say much more about this session than that – particularly because I’d be running this with Bert Sandie from EA Technologies and Dan Pontefract from TELUS, and we’d still need to have a more detailed conversation about what we’re going to talk about when and if we get our submission voted through to the conference!  But I think we’ve all got a similar perspective on 2.0 linked culture change, and good experiences to share as well, so I’m sure it’d be a great session.

 

I do want to say more about, and try to better explain my thinking, about the other two sessions:

 

The Importance of focusing on Social Outcomes to enable Culture Change and 2.0 Implementation

One of my worries about 2.0 is that there often seems to be a lack of focus on clear benefits – a rationale for doing something.  To some extent, this is down to an understandable and appropriate desire to take advantage of emergence – but I don’t think simply implementing technology and hoping some random benefits are going to emerge are going to be enough.

For me, the main benefits of 2.0 relate to culture.  Yes, there are a range of other potential benefits as well, including more proactive customer service, knowledge sharing, employee engagement etc.  But culture is typically what makes these other benefits achievable as well.

And we’re not just talking about any type of culture – we’re talking about ‘social cultures’: cultures which emphasise the importance of social relationships.  Take innovation as an example.  An innovative culture doesn’t have to be social – by emphasising the role of individual vs team-based brainstorming for example.  Or it could emphasise the need for people to connect with others across and outside of the organisation and to share their different experiences and perspectives – a deeply social approach.  It’s this second type of culture that enterprise 2.0 supports.

And actually, the same is true within HR, OD and other fields more focused on culture change as well.  As I said in my earlier session on this, with Margaret Schweer in Santa Clara, it’s a point HR guru Dave Ulrich often makes about this profession: that to be strategic, and to maximise impact, HR needs to focus on outcomes, not activities (or technologies).

So instead of asking “how do we change the culture to support 2.0 adoption” (which seems to be the focus of a couple of submissions for the conference) we should be asking “what sort of culture do we need to develop and how can this best be supported?”  I think the second question is a very different one to the first, and this leads to a set of very different actions – combining and integrating 2.0 technology with HR, OD, communication, leadership, workplace design and other areas too.  And in which all of these are working together to achieve a cultural outcome, not just supporting technological implementation.

And apologies to Peter Kim and Barry Libert, but in my view, it’s only by doing this that we really get to create a truly social business / ‘social nation’.

 

Tailoring 2.0 Projects for different Social Outcomes

This submission focuses on the impact of combining the last two.  Yes, it’s important to understand what you need to do to create a social culture, and most of what you need to do is going to be largely the same from organisation to organisation, culture to culture.

But the really important actions, and the ones which most organisations get wrong, are those which are focused on developing the culture a particular organisation needs.

Take the different cultural types listed by Bert:

• A Culture of Sharing
• A Culture of Collaboration
• A Culture of Innovation
• A Culture of Knowledge
• A Culture of Learning.

 

Each of these need a different set of cultual actions if they are going to be implemented successfully.

This need to tailor approaches is seen in the 2.0 technology area as well.  And it’s interesting to see that Rawn Shah has submitted a proposal suggesting that an organisation’s approach to measurement also be tailored to that organisation’s situation (and I’d suggest culture / social outcomes).

But I think this need to tailor is much bigger than that too.  So in this session, I’d explore each of the different cultural types and talk about the different HR, OD, communication, leadership, workplace design and technology related actions that are needed within each of these different types.

 

So…

I’ve made these three submissions because I think culture, or more precisely focusing on, and tailoring activities for, different social outcomes is the most important aspect of 2.0.  In this at least, I completely agree with Bert:

“In many of these sessions and conversations the “Culture” word is rarely discussed at the level of depth necessary for practitioners to achieve real success with E2.0 initiatives in their organizations.”

 

So I was originally hoping we might be able to develop Santa Clara’s session on culture into a whole track at Boston (a suggestion tweeted by Dan).

I guess this is unlikely because there have actually been (what is to me) surprising few other submissions on culture.  But there 43 submissions on leadership and organisational change.

I don’t personally see this as important as culture – or a focus on social outcomes.  Leadership and effective change without the right focus, eg with one on the technology, still isn’t going to take organisations where it is possible to go.

But I still hope we may end up with a track on culture, leadership and change.  And that at least one of my sessions will be in it!  Do please give these sessions your vote (registration required) if you’d like that to be the case!:

• Tailoring 2.0 projects for different social outcomes
• The importance of focusing on social outcomes to enable culture change and 2.0 implementation
• Creating social cultures.

 

Technorati Tags: Enterprise 2.0,conference,Boston,2011,culture,Dan Pontefract,Bert Sandie,social,outcome,business

 

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Collaborative capacity: The role of Culture in Enterprise 2.0

 

  So earlier this month, I delivered a session at the Santa Clara Enterprise 2.0 conference together with Margaret Schweer – a colleague of Tammy Erickson from nGeneral Insight (Moxie Software).

Margaret outlined the factors which are important in building collaborative capacity / culture, and some of the things organisations are doing to develop it.

I emphasised the need for E2.0 (and HR) practitioners to switch their focus to social outcomes like collaborative capacity (and/or I’d suggest other social outcomes such as innovation, speed, learning, customer service etc).

And I suggested the two key things companies wanting to take advantage of these opportunities need to do are:

• Have a strategic / social intent – or mojo
• Plan face-to-face and technological activities around this mojo and desired outcomes.

 

This is the important point - just implementing 2.0 technologies won’t necessarily produce these outcomes – you need to plan for them.

This doesn’t discount the role of emergence – but these things are too important to be left to chance.

Comments /thoughts?

 

See this write-up on the session.

 

Some of the tweets:

• VictorHeredia: Interesting concept of Organizational Capabilities as an improvement of core competencies presented by @joningham at #e2conf
• joningham: RT @VictorHeredia: @joningham:"Successful, sustainable collaboration platforms have to work for the individual" at #e2conf, and help the individual in his work
• rdeis: Trust is essential for collaboration. For most, trust develops through relationships. Margaret Schweer @nGeneraInsight #e2conf
• rdeis: Create employment practices consistent with a ?Community of Adults? Stop measuring time. Margaret Schweer @nGeneraInsight #e2conf
• rdeis: Employees First, Customers Second. book by Vineet Nayar. Recommended by @joningham People, Culture, Behavior Session #e2conf
• mijori23: RT @joningham Business people may not like the word ('social') - that's the problem. #e2conf Their customers use it - learn to like it!
• joningham: RT@lehawes @roonoid Want to improve collaboration culture? First realize that most collaboration doesn't happen online #e2conf
• jdthurber: @joningham I think it is more than that. "Social" doesn't really describe the full impact/purpose of the new "social corporation." #e2conf

 

And I liked this tweet from earlier on as well:

• ITSinsider: "You're going to succeed or fail on culture." @bsandie presents for 30 min on adoption and has not yet talked technology. #e2conf

 

Why would you need to?

 

Picture credit: Ryan Coleman

Technorati Tags: Culture,collaboration,social,Margaret Scweer,Ngenera,Moxie,Enterprise 2.0,conference,Santa Clara,HR

 

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Enterprise 2.0 summary

 

   I still need to catch up on quite a few posts from the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston.  I captured them live in draft but didn’t get time at or since the conference to publish.  They will out before the end of the month!

Of course, you will find commentaries on all the sessions elsewhere, but I hope you’ll value my additional insight built into the posts as well.

And I thought I’d give you a summary of some of these insights, in terms of my major overall reflections on some of the key themes and debates at the conference.

 

Culture and tools

There seemed to be a significant split in attendees / perspectives between a focus on on culture, and a focus on technology.  I’m not saying anyone thought culture was unimportant – that certainly wasn’t the case, but it’s about prioritisation.  Some people clearly understood that culture (the way people work together, collaborate etc) is the most important element in e 2.0.  At the other end of the scale, there was a view that we’ve reached the end of the ‘culture 2.0 crusade’.  I believe this focus is important, and suggest it does need to be on culture.

I’ve got another draft post on this which I’ll be posting here shortly as well.

And I’m proposing to speak on this subject at the next e 2.0 conference in Santa Clara in November.

 

Creating and adding value

A further issue was around the role of e 2.0 in bringing around changes.  The prevailing train of thinking suggested that e 2.0 technologies need to be embedded in business processes, and what people do within their jobs.  Ie that 2.0 adds value to existing processes to help them and the people performing them work effectively.  Or maybe that 2.0 can create value, ie help people and organisations do new things by applying appropriate innovations faster than elsewhere (as a solution in search of a problem).

To me, its people, and their relationships, that create value.  2.0 technologies play a role in helping them do this.  And most of what people do happens on top of and around business processes.  So if we want 2.0 to create value, to lead change, we need to extend its use beyond the workflow.  We need to focus on peoples’ working-lives rather than just work-flows.

The challenge in doing this is in getting people to do something that goes beyond their narrowly defined jobs.  But this is where the benefit lies as well.

Again, I aim to post on this in more detail.

 

HR and IT

E 2.0 is not an IT conference, but there were certainly more CIOs and IT Directors than there were people from any other function.  A couple of people and tweets commented on the lack of HR people.

Actually, there were about 15 of us there.  Not a huge number perhaps but the conference agenda is going to have to change to encourage more, eg less headache inducing product demos dressed up as keynotes, and just a broader agenda too – choosing between various social technologies that all do pretty much the same job isn’t to me what 2.0 needs to be about.

But HR is increasingly interested in this.  Or at least in the benefits 2.0 can provide.  To me, it’s just that IT and HR aren’t talking to each other sufficiently.

And we need HR to be part of the conversation.  I try to wear a business rather than an HR had on this blog (my HR blog is Strategic HCM).  But I can’t get away from the fact that if culture vs tools is what’s important, HR should really be the key owner and driver of 2.0 oriented (social) change.

So I’ve got another proposal in for Santa Clara to help IT understand the ping points for HR, and develop a closer conversation between the two functions (and I’d like to do one focusing in reverse for the CIPD or SHRM).

 

Best and emerging practices

I felt there also seemed to be growing body of opinion that we all know and share a reasonably similar view about what e 2.0 needs to involve, how best to do it etc.  We don’t (or at least I don’t – see above).

I’d like to see the conference hang back from trying to focus on ‘the solution’ and encourage more diversity in thought (I’d have liked to have seen a few more rather more divergent thinkers like Stowe Boyd and Paula Thornton on the agenda too).

Oh, and a diversity in case studies too.  I’ve already posted on EMC, Cisco, CSC and IDEO and my draft folder includes posts on AXA, IBM, Microsoft, Sony, UBM and Vanguard.  Notice any similarities?  I’d like to see the conference help push interest and usage out beyond the IT sector, even if this means focusing more on current attempts vs successful case studies (actually, I think I’d prefer this anyway).

However, I don’t think getting this diversity is likely.  We all understand enough about ‘culture 2.0’ to know that people link with (and vote for) people like themselves.

So I somehow can’t see myself presenting in Santa Clara!?

 

Picture credit: JoJan

 

Previous posts:

• HR and Communities (Talking HR 029)
• Enterprise 2.0: Social Media and Community
• Enterprise 2.0: Communities aren’t sites, they’re ...
• Enterprise 2.0: Sharepoint – an all-or-nothing dec...
• Enterprise 2.0 tweet-up
• Enterprise 2.0: IDEO and Innovation
• Enterprise 2.0: CSC and Social Collaboration
• Enterprise 2.0: Cisco and the Human Network @ Work...
• Enterprise 2.0: Culture and the islands of Me and ...
• Enterprise 2.0 conference: EMC’s business case

 

and on Strategic HCM:

• Social Learning at the Enterprise 2.0 conference
• HR 2.0 at the Enterprise 2.0 conference: Human Resources and Workforce Collaboration

 

Technorati Tags: Enterprise 2.0,Boston Consulting Group,Santa Clara,culture,tools,technology,HR,workflow

 

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Enterprise 2.0: Culture and the islands of Me and We

 

   Day 2 starts with a session on knowledge management, enterprise 2.0 and the cultural barrier by Carl Frappaolo.

I had high hopes for this session because I think it’s the only one on culture, and I think this is one of the most important and least well understood subjects within E2.0.  As Frappaolo notes, lack of adequate culture and high barriers to adoption, are the root cause of many failures in knowledge management and related fields:

“Enterprise 2.0 on the other hand promises to provide low barrier and organic approaches to knowledge capture, and embraces the open and transparent culture of Web 2.0. Is Enterprise 2.0 the salvation of KM or do cultural and adoption issues still loom? More importantly, is the functionality provided by these tools mature and robust enough to qualify as knowledge management, or only simple collaboration. This talk looks at the critical intersection of Enterprise 2.0 and KM, and asks the critical question – can E20 crack the KM culture and adoption barrier.”

 

Frappaolo notes that culture is a slippery topic and means different things to different people.  He defines it as the sum total of attitudes, opinions, morals and ethics etc – the different going ons within a community, eg an enterprise. It’s separate to but influenced by process, technology etc.  It can drive processes or totally circumvent them.

In Frappaolo’s view, technology isn’t going to change culture but cultures can act as a pull for technology (* I have a slightly different view).  So it’s important to understand the culture of the organisation that you’re starting with.  In some, E 2.0 isn’t going to work.  So Frappaolo identifies seven cultural types:

• Islands of me: personal and organisational silos.  Siloed databases work well (not E2.0)
• One-way me: I am collaborative but in a one-to-many approach. Shared silod repositories, email works well.
• Team me.  Starting to accept the idea of we.  Shared repositories start to work.
• Proactive me.  I consider a major part of what I do to be a team player.  Agents, portals, executive dashboards to push knowledge to people are readily accepted.
• Two-way me.  I’m proactive about building communities.  Social networking is embraced.
• Islands of we.  Cutting edge of culture.  Senior management buys into the idea of socialness.  A core competency.  Understand emergence.  Think modular and integrated ito IT.
• Extended me.  Full transparency internally and externally.  Emergence, wisdom of crowds a key part of what they do. 

 

* A personal view:

Frappaolo’s presentation related to a question that’s often asked on E2.0 blogs: whether you need to change culture first, in order to set the ground for E2.0; or whether you can use E2.0 implementation to change the culture.

To me, it’s the wrong question.  Firstly, because the objective shouldn’t be to implement E2.0.  The objective needs to be to do something valuable, whether this is to achieve business goals or to develop social or knowledge capital.  This will determine whether culture needs to change.

Secondly, I have a slightly different definition of culture to Frappaolo.  To me, culture is about conversation.  So anything that changes the conversations taking place in an organisation changes the culture.  E2.0 is part of this shift.

 

So I completely agree with Frappaolo’s conclusion: don’t try to change culture just through technology.  And don’t throw technology at groups who don’t want to be collaborative.

A great session!

 

View today’s keynotes from#e2conf at tv.e2conf.com/ and see my reviews at bit.ly/e20conf

Technorati Tags: Carl Frappaolo,Information Architected,Enterprise 2.0,conference,Boston,culture,knowledge management

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Lynda Gratton on Nokia and the future of work

 

    I’ve already posted at Strategic HCM on Lynda Gratton’s Future of Work blog and her recent article at HR Magazine.  But she’s also got a good article up on London Business School’s site, reviewing Nokia’s Booster Programme.

 

One of the things I’ve posted on quite frequently at this blog, is the need to combing real and virtual (or as Nokia say, analogue and digital) activities in order to best achieve certain outcomes.

In Gratton’s article, she explains how Nokia’s ‘Booster Programme’ used a blended approach including both sets of activities to engage with people throughout the world and to do so in fast and compelling ways:

 

Need: fundamental organisational change covering 5000 employees.

Analogue activities: a two-day face-to-face workshop with team leaders

Digital activities: online social network communities providing much broader involvement of the whole organisation.

“The two-day workshops were staged in locations across the world, including Beijing, White Plains (New York), Helsinki, London and Dubai. About 100 potential change leaders were part of each workshop.

When all workshops were completed, the 700 participants then returned to their teams to engage them in the ongoing process. It was at this point that the online community came to the fore. Working with specialist partners, the design team created an intranet site accessible to workshop participants and all employees of the Markets business. The online community was designed to host conversations and communications with senior managers as well as to provide information and ideas from content experts and community members.”

 

Result: daunting organisational change made fully effective within one week!

Gratton notes that:

“The capacity of social networks to create engagement and innovation is seen to be crucial to the long-term success of Nokia.”

 

But importantly, social networks didn’t achieve this on their own!  It was down to both real and virtual communication, and importantly, to Nokia’s collaborative organisation structure and culture:

“Only about 100 people assuming new jobs. For the rest of Nokia’s employees, there was no need to change jobs; the modular teams of which they were members were simply reconfigured. The discipline, philosophy and mindset of reconfiguration through standardisation and shared platforms ensured that Nokia is able to skilfully and rapidly reconfigure its human resources to meet changing customer needs.”

 

So that’s change management sorted then!

 

Photo credit: boostedfc3s

Technorati Tags: Lynda Gratton,Joel Casse,Nokia,social networking,communities,change management,Booster,programme

 

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More from the CIPD conference – developing a culture of…

 

   There were quite a few sessions at the conference about developing a culture of something, eg of:

• Coaching (Jane Turner, Newcastle Business School)
• High performance (David Smith, ex-ASDA)
• Homogeneity in a global context (Mark Adams, Abbey / Santander)
• Innovation (Jaideep Prabhu, University of Cambridge)
• Integrity (Roger Steare, Cass Business School)
• Leadership (Anete Jajkowska, Microsoft)
• Resilience (Rebecca McIntosh and Claire Jelley, also at the University of Cambridge, but internal this time).

 

However, there wasn’t any linking between sessions these even thought the actions organisations need to take to develop each one of these cultures are largely the same thing!

Basically, there are two or three key steps:

 

1.    Decide what / how you want to be

Organisations can’t do everything, so the key question is which of the capabilities from the above list are most important for you?  Having a clear BHAG or mojo will make this easier for you.

Describe the required capability in detail – what behaviours and actions will you expect to see when this capability is in place?  This becomes what McIntosh and Jelley referred to as their North Star.

This is, of course, where things between each of the culture types are a bit different, and where some knowledge of the particular type of culture, and what attributes / behaviours support it, is required.

For a culture of innovation for example, Jaideep Prabhu suggests that organisations need three particular attitudes:

• Future market focus
• Willingness to cannibalise
• Tolerance for risk.

 

Once these three things are in place, innovation should follow.

Actually, I think there’s probably a bit more too it than this ( read my post on Hal Gregersen’s presentation, and listen to the last Talking HR show where I discussed developing innovative cultures with MOK from the Innovation Beehive).

 

2.   Decide on the actions which are going to lead to the required attitudes (and them do them)

For innovation, Prabhu suggests the following:

• Product champions
• Asymmetric incentives
• Internal markets.

 

Once again, I think it’s a little more complicated that this!  In fact, it’s the actions Prabhu doesn’t mention, that are common to the development of all these different types of culture that are the most important.

So, what are these?

 

Hard issues

Well, there are a few ‘hard’ issues, such as getting your ducks in a row, ie linking all of your HR and management activities to the required capability, and then monitoring these activities (see Microsoft’s system model, and people scorecard):

 

 

 

 

You might even want to produce a few T-shirts?

 

Soft issues

But the soft areas are the harder ones (if you see what I mean).

David Smith did a good job of describing some of these in connection with ASDA’s journey:

• Hire for attitude
• Communicate, communicate, communicate
• Listening
• Engaging style of management and leadership
• Remove your underperfomers, push your talent
• Recognition
• Fun / buzz and a sense of community.

 

But I think Roger Steare captured what’s at the heart of changing these soft issues even more accurately.  For him, good behaviour and culture is when:

• People stop and think
• People talk about shared values
• People unite around a common purpose
• People act fairly for the common good.

 

Out of these, it’s talking (- particularly about what’s important - see Emmanuel Gobillot’s ‘narratives’) which is at the hear of culture change.  There was a good post on this in Harvard Business / Peter Bregman’s blog How We Work, this Summer.  This put culture change down to the way we tell stories:

"You change a culture with stories. Right now your stories are about how hard you work people. Like the woman you forced to work on her wedding day. You may not be proud of it, but it's the story you tell. That story conveys your culture simply and reliably. And I'm certain you're not the only one who tells it. You can be sure the bride tells it. And all her friends. If you want to change the culture, you have to change the stories.

I told him not to change the performance review system, the rewards packages, the training programs. Don't change anything. Not yet anyway. For now, just change the stories. For a while there will be a disconnect between the new stories and the entrenched systems promoting the old culture. And that disconnect will create tension. Tension that can be harnessed to create mechanisms to support the new stories.”

 

It emphasises, I think, that much of what we mean when we talk about culture change is actually social capital (which I define as the value of the connections, relationships and conversations taking place between people in an organisation).

And which brings us straight back to the importance of Connectivity again!

 

Technorati Tags: Culture,coaching,high performance,global,innovation,integrity,leadership,Jane Turner,Newcastle Business School,David Smith,ASDA,Mark Adams,Abbey,Santander,Jaideep Prabhu,Roger Steare,Anete Jajkowska,Microsoft,Rebecca McIntosh,Claire Jelley,Peter Bregman,CIPD,Manchester

Cross posted from Strategic HCM.

 

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3 modes of web 2.0 implementation

 

     I’ve posted previously (1,2) on the challenges of implementing web 2.0 / social media.  However, there are actually three separate modes of implementation, each with their own set of challenges - and organisations need to be clear about which of these modes apply to them in order to identify and prepare for the appropriate challenges:

 

Mode 1:   Technology inspired implementation - an example of what I refer to as ‘value for money’ (in the value triangle)

 

Organisations often introduce new technologies in order to keep abreast of new development and opportunities.  This happens particularly frequently with social media as there is so much hype around its benefits.

So, for example, an organisation may launch a new internal social network, hoping perhaps to encourage and enable more internal conversations (maybe even as an alternative to going undercover?).  Or it might introduce a wiki to replace document distribution in order to improve knowledge sharing, productivity etc.

However, there is usually no real link to the business strategy behind using social media in this way.  But this doesn’t mean that it’s not a useful thing to do.  And it may also provide an important basis for using social media in the other modes.

 

Implementing social technologies in this mode is best done by introducing the appropriate system across the organisation (to maximise participation), and making it easy and attractive for people to get involved, for example, by letting them use it to support personal vs business needs, and enabling use of pictures and videos etc.

Once people have got used to this technology, the organisation may then go on to introduce another web 2.0 system in the same of a different mode.

 

Social media is also often introduced this way, ‘under the radar’, when there is no business sponsorship for any other use of the technology.

Examples:

• BT

 

Mode 2:   Business driven programme support – an example of adding value

The second mode is one which social media is used to meet particular business needs, for example to improve collaboration or innovation on a particular business project.

This doesn’t mean that the implementation can’t include personal applications, but the main focus is on the business.

 

In this mode, social media is best introduced by using one or a combination of systems, probably with a particular group of employees, in a way that very clearly supports the identified business need.

It’s much more likely that social media will be introduced as part of a major business programme when in this mode.  But the business programme should focus on the need which is being met, rather than the technology that is being used.

Examples:

• Microsoft Academy Mobile (I’d argue this was about a business need because Microsoft needed people to up to speed with this for external as well as internal reasons.)

 

Mode 3:   Creation of organisation capability – an example of creating value

This mode is quite similar to mode 2.  But here, the focus is on the intangible capability, the type of social capital that is being created.

It’s likely that the programme creating this social capital will receive an even bigger launch, will involve all or at least most people in the organisation and that social media will form a much larger part of this programme, than in option 2.

It’s therefore likely that culture change will be central to this.

Examples:

• IBM
• Cisco

 

Photo credit: Henningklevjer

Technorati Tags: Web 2.0,implementation,BT,Microsoft,IBM,Cisco

 

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Sociability and Solidarity

 

   I've been reading some of Rob Goffee's and Gareth Jones' Harvard Business review articles and their book, 'Why should anyone be led by you?', following a presentation by Jones recently.

in 'What holds the modern company together?', they make the point that culture is community:

"It is an outcome of how people relate to one another... Businesses rest on patterns of social interaction that sustain them over time or are their undoing.  They are built on shared interests and mutual obligations and thrive on cooperation and friendships."

 

I like this definition - and I'm increasingly finding that social (plus human and organisational) capital provides a more useful, granular way of looking at organisations than 'culture'.

I also agree with the author's perspective that culture can therefore be examined through the 'lens of sociology, which divides community into two types of distinct human relations: sociability and solidarity".

 

Solidarity (mind)

Solidarity measures a community's ability to pursue shared objectives quickly and effectively, regardless of personal ties.  It is about relationships which are build on common tasks, mutual interests, or shared goals that will benefit all involved parties.

 

Sociability (heart)

Sociability measures sincere friendliness and non-instrumental relations (in which people don't see others simply as means of satisfying their own ends) among members of a community, associating with each other on equal terms.  It is based on shared ideas, attitudes, interests and values and is sustained through continuing face-to-face relations.

Sociability leads to enjoyable work environments, morale, teamwork, sharing of information, openness to new ideas, creativity and engagement.  However, reinforcing the recent Demos report, and like solidarity, sociability also comes with certain drawbacks:

"The prevalence of friendships may allow poor performance to be tolerated.  No one wants to rebuke or fire a friend.  It's more comfortable to accept - and excuse - subpar performance in light of an employee's personal problems.

In addition, high sociability environments are often characterised by an exaggerated concern for consensus.  That is to say, friends are often reluctant to disagree with or criticise one another...  The result: the best compromise gets applied to problems, not the best solution.

In addition, high sociability communities often develop cliques and informal, behind-the-scenes networks that can circumvent or, worse, undermine due process in an organisation...  Friendships and unofficial networks of friendships allow people to pull an end run around the hierarchy...  In other words, networks can function well if you are insider - you know the right people, hear the right gossip.  Those on the outside often feel lost in the organisation, mistreated by it, or simply unable to affect processes or products in any real way."

 

To me, these aren't so much problems with sociability, as with poor execution or sociable approaches.  I think increasingly, organisations do need to be sociable, and organisations need to find ways to avoid the drawbacks outlined by Goffee & Jones / Demos.

 

Two dimensions, four cultures

Goffee and Jones plot solidarity and sociability against each other to provide the two by two shown in the graphic.  The authors emphasise that "none of the cultures is the best" but when discussing a fragmented culture (low solidarity, low sociability), they note "Few managers would volunteer to work for or, perhaps harder still, run a fragmented organisation."

They also have a few concerns about a communal culture (high solidarity, high sociability) too:

"The communal culture may be an inappropriate and unobtainable ideal in many business contexts...

First, high levels of sociability and high solidarity are often around particular founders or leaders whose departure may weaken either or both forms of social relationship.

Second, the high-sociability half of the communal culture is often antithetical to what goes on inside and organisation during periods of growth, diversification , or internationalisation.  These massive and complex change efforts require focus, urgency and performance - the stuff of solidarity in its undiluted form.

More profoundly though, there may be a built-in tension between relationships of sociability and solidarity that makes the communal business enterprise an inherently unstable form.  The sincere geniality of sociability doesn't usually exist - it can't - with solidarity's dispassionate, sometimes ruthless focus on achievement of goals."

 

So I think what Goffee and Jones are really saying is that organisations need high solidarity and high sociability, but not both (ie that the ideal culture is either networked or mercenary).

And I'd add to this, that solidarity is becoming more difficult to achieve, and therefore sociability is becoming increasingly important.  So if you have to choose between the two, choose this (ie networked vs mercenary).

However, I still struggle to see how both solidarity or sociability, executed well, can be a bad thing.  I'd respond to Goffee's and Jones' challenges by saying that organisations need to find ways of building sustainable cultures, which can support efficient achievement of goals, and that maybe if we did this, success rates in growth, diversification and internationalisation may be a lot higher than they generally are now!

 

Building sociability

Goffee and Jones also note that to build sociability, managers can:

• Promote the sharing of ideas, interests, and emotions by recruiting compatible people - people who naturally seem likely to become friends
• Increase social interaction among employees by arranging causal gatherings inside and outside the office, such as parties, excursions - even book clubs
• Reduce formality between employees
• Limit hierarchical differences
• Act like a friend yourself, and set the example for geniality and kindness by caring for those in trouble.

 

I think there are some great suggestions here.

 

Technorati Tags: Rob Goffee,Gareth Jones,What Holds the Modern Company Together,Why Should Anyone be Led by You

 

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