Bertrand Duperrin LiFEstream

[Post] The death of oral exchanges in the workplace ?

Bertrand Duperrin — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:00:47 GMT

Résumé :some people are more comfortable with oral exchanges, some others with written ones. Similarly, some companies have a culture that's more "latin" than others. Before even thinking of changing the way people work we have to admit that some of the tools that have to support these new ways of working do not fit a part of the workforce and even many companys for which switching from oral to written is vert hard. Does it mean that enterprise 2.0 is doomed to failure ? Will the upcoming evolution happen to detriment of oral culture cimpanies ? No, because tools are getting more oral themselves. But a question remains : will tools evolve before many people give up ?

Do you prefer oral or written communication ? And your enterprise ? We all have our own preferences, each company has its culture and an efficient work requires to find the right balance between staff preferences and the corporate culture.

This is not trivial at all. Imagine two people having to work together, who have a very good relationship together, if one is more "oral" and the other more "written' it may cause many issues and misunderstandings in their everyday work. Imagine a high level executive who joins a new company, if he's "oral" in a very formal organization or very formal in an oral culture company, things will be very difficult.

That clearly impacts the capacity any organization has to change the way it works, to embark on social media. What, seen from a different standpoint, could be turned into : "will enterprise 2.0 kill oral cultures ?".

Traditionnally, organizations favor written things. More reliable, more "engaging" while words only engage those who hear them, easier to track and to be used as an evidence the day someone has to find what has gone wrong and why. But there are also organizations where people prefer to talk together rather than write, where the direct human contact is prefered. The Chief HR Officer of a company of this kind once used the word "latin" to describe their culture when we were discussing this kind of issue together. That's the same for people, each have their prefered way of communicating.

The fact is that writing is the enteprise 2.0 tool's favorite way of communicating. It's easy to understand why.

- keyboarding is still the by default way of entering information into any system. The success of Youtube must not mislead us : most of the videos that are shared aim at showing something more than delivering a personal message and people are seldom exposing themselves on their videos.

- text is searchable, can be indexed by a search engine. We still don't know how to capitalize on oral things...except by writing them down.

- it's possible to skim through a text and get the key messages while we have to watch a whole video to know what's worth in. Sometimes we don't have 10 minutes to watch a video or listen to a podcast but, when its transcription is available, I can quickly read it and know what it's about, even if I come to the conclusion I have come back to it later.

- text allows asynchronous conversations, oral does not. (If fact it's only half-true).

- not every computer in corporate offices has a webcam...in most of time the infrastructure is so slow....

To make it short, people who like oral communication are usually not comfortable with the new tools we try to make them use and I would not be surprise to learn that the reason why many refuse to change the way they work is mainly because they don't like to write. By the way, that's quite funny to see that this unstructured kind of written communication that's often said being "informal" compared to other written things is even too formal for oral people.

Must we come to the conclusion that some people won't be allowed in the next evolutions boat ? Or that these evolutions won't happen because they are counter-natural for too many people ? That many organizations will loose their "latinity" (by the way...why do you think adoption seems to be much harder in latin and south-european countries..?)

Yes...and no.

No, because things are improving ?

- something tells me that with CISCO coming on the E20 battlefielsd there will be a pressure on a wise and efficient use of video.

- Microblogging seems to be a good substitute for oral. It's, in fact "the oral of those who write".

- we already saw on the web something very interesting with Seesmic Video. This promising tool that haven't become mainstream yet has everything to be an enterprise killer application because it allows to have asynchronous video conversations in the easiest possible way.

Yes, because it will take a lot of time for technology to become mature and mainstream and, for infrastructure to be able to handle a lot of video contents, for search engines to index such contents...

(Source: Bertrand Duperrin's Notepad)

[Post] Vers la fin de l'oralité en entreprise ?

Bertrand Duperrin — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 07:00:44 GMT

Résumé : certains ont un mode de communication plus oral, d'autres plus écrit. De la même manière il y a des cultures d'entreprise plus ou moins latines. Avant même de parler de changer les modes de travail, force est de reconnaitre que les outils qui les supportent ne sont pas adaptés à toute une frange de la population pour des raisons de mode de fonctionnement personnels, voire à des zones entières du globe pour des raisons culturelles, pour qui le passage de l'oral à l'écrit est très difficile. L'entreprise 2.0 est elle condamnée de fait ? L'évolution se fera-t-elle au détriment de certains qui seront laissés au bord de la route ? Non parce que les outils vont dans le bon sens et s'"oralisent". Mais l'évolution des outils sera-t-elle assez rapide pour se faire avant que certains ne se découragent ?

Etes vous oral ou écrit ? Et votre entreprise ? Nous avons tous nos préférences à titre personnel, certaines entreprises ont une culture forte d'écrit ou d'oral (certains dirons d'informalité ou de formalisme) et un travail efficace dépend déjà du fait que l'on trouver un mode opératoire commun entre collaborateurs ayant à travailler ensemble et qu'on soit à peu près cohérent avec la culture d'entreprise.

C'est tout sauf trivial. Prenez deux personnes qui ont une vraie envie de travailler ensemble, qui entretiennent d'excellents rapports humains, si l'un est dans l'oralité et l'autre dans l'écrit cela risque de poser d'incroyables problèmes au quotidien. Ou imaginez un manager de haut niveau qui rejoint une nouvelle entreprise, s'il est très oral dans une entreprise hyper formelle ou à l'inverse très formaliste dans une entreprise à la culture orale forte c'est loin d'être gagné d'avance.

Et tout cela n'est pas neutre dans la capacité d'une entreprise à changer ses modes de travail, à embrasser l'ère des réseaux sociaux. Ce qui vu sous un autre angle pourrait également se traduire par "l'entreprise 2.0 va-t-elle tuer les cultures d'entreprises orales" ?

Traditionnellement l'entreprise favorise l'écrit. Plus fiable, plus "engageant", l'écrit reste alors que la parole n'engage que celui qui l'entend, plus "traçable", plus à même de constituer une preuve le jour où on cherche ce qui n'a pas fonctionné. Il n'en reste pas moins qu'il y a des entreprises où l'on préfère se parler plutôt qu'écrire, où l'on privilégie le contact humain direct. Le DRH d'une grande entreprise de ce type avait, sur ce point, qualifié leur culture d'entreprise de "latine" lors d'une de nos discussions. Il en va de même chez les individus, à chacun son mode de fonctionnement de prédilection.

Le fait est que l'écrit est le mode d'expression par essence des outils et modes de fonctionnement dits "2.0″. Ce qui est facilement explicable :

- dès que l'on parle d'informatique, personnelle ou d'entreprise, et malgré le succès de Youtube, tout est plutôt pensé pour la saisie sur clavier qui reste notre mode de fonctionnement "par défaut" devant un écran. D'ailleurs se reposer sur Youtube pour prédire l'émergence de la vidéo comme média informatique de référence dans l'avenir serait une erreur : la plupart des vidéos qui y sont partagées par des utilisateurs visent à "montrer quelque chose" plus qu'à délivrer un message personnel et être l'acteur principal de la vidéo. On montre des choses en vidéos mais, proportionnellement parlant, on ne s'y montre pas.

- le texte est "cherchable", indexable par un moteur de recherche. On ne sait pas encore capitaliser l'oral..sauf à l'écrire

- on peut survoler un texte pour en saisir l'essentiel alors qu'il faut regarder toute une vidéo pour en retirer quelque chose. Il arrive que je n'aie pas 10 minutes pour regarder une vidéo ou écouter un podcast mais, lorsqu'elle est disponible, je peux survoler la transcription écrite et en saisir les éléments clé, quitte à me dire qu'il faut y revenir de manière plus approfondie plus tard.

- le texte permet les échanges asynchrones, pas l'oral (quoi qu'on verra plus tard que ça n'est pas si exact).

- tous les postes de travail ne sont pas équipés en webcam...et quand je vois la rapidité de beaucoup d'infrastructures

Bref les personnes et les entreprises qui privilégient l'oral sont par définition peu à l'aise avec les nouveaux outils que nous leur proposons et je ne serais pas surpris d'apprendre que la difficulté à les amener vers un mode de fonctionnement différent n'est pas tant du à un refus de changer "personnellement" qu'à passer à un mode écrit. Il est d'ailleurs amusant de voir que cet écrit peu structuré qui est dit "informel" par rapport aux autres formes de communications textuelles est déjà beaucoup trop formel pour les adeptes de l'oral.

Faut il en conclure que certains resteront à la porte des prochaines évolutions ? Qu'au contraire ces évolutions ne se feront pas car étant contre nature pour beaucoup (trop ?) de monde ? Ou que certaines entreprises y perdront leur "latinité" (d'ailleurs on peut se demander pourquoi les pays latins et du sud de l'Europe semblent avoir encore plus de mal que les autres...).

Oui et non.

Non parce que les choses s'améliorent :

- quelque chose me dit qu'avec l'arrivée de CISCO dans le jeu des acteurs de l'entreprise 2.0 il va y avoir une pression forte sur l'utilisation "intelligente", efficace et pratique de la vidéo

- le microblogging semble être un substitut pratique à l'oral. C'est en fait l'"oral de ceux qui écrivent".

- on a déjà vu dans le web grand public quelque chose d'extrêmement intéressant avec Seesmic Video.Outil jugé prometteur mais pas encore assez "mainstream" dans le grand public il a tout de la "killer application" d'entreprise car permettant de faire du conversationnel asynchrone en format vidéo court et de la manière la plus simple qui soit.

Oui parce que temps que tout cela devienne mûr, que les réseaux d'entreprise soient capable de tenir la charge en vidéo, que l'on conçoive des moteurs capables d'indexer et comprendre un contenu vidéo, il faudra encore patienter.

Partagez cet article avec votre réseau:

Articles sur le même sujet

(Source: Bloc-Notes de Bertrand Duperrin)

[Post] Empowered : the service marketing (and even economy) manifesto

Bertrand Duperrin — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 14:00:57 GMT

I just finished the reading of Empowered, by Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler, that is in some ways the sequel of Groundswell which was a must read when it was published. To be honest, I have been quite deceived by Groundswell. Of course that's a lucid, accurate and comprehensive photography of what the web is today and is still worth reading for many execs because there's still an impressive gap between the usages of the web and how decision makers gets it. But something was missing in the conclusions : businesses must, of course, go on the web and join the groundswell, ok there are identified best practices about than? And so what ? Flirting with internauts is useless if it doesn't create any kind of value for both the business and the customer.

That's the new dimension brought by "empowered" : the book goes far beyond the nice discussions on the web to tackle what's core in business :realigning the whole company with customer satisfaction. Everything starts with one assumption : facing a customer that can talk, compare, and impact the reputation of the company, there's a need for employees able to fight with the same weapons, to join the customer on his own field. What means : use the same tools as the customer, meet him where he his and take any initiative to meet his expectations. The answer to customer's needs will result more and for from an individual initiative from an employee, taylored and designed "on demand" that from the general and standardized corporate discours that aims at addressing anything without addressing anyone.

To do so, not only the employee has to want to engage in such a process but also the company must not prevent him from acting this way and, ideally, must provide him with the right tools and policies to achieve a good customer service. Saying that, the issue appears to be about management and IT policied that the book tackles in a pragmatic and lucid way. Some organizations that are comfortable with their good old practices from another century may not be comfortable with that but the arguments are clear and indisputable. That's not about giving up control and let anybody do anything but facilitating things with a framework that's secured at both the legal and IT level. Moreover, and that adds to the credibility ot the book, the authors admit that employees may be a danger to themselves and the organization and some risks have to be mitigated. That's the first fundamental contribution of the book : for once, marketing is not considered as an isolated bubble but as a part of a global chain that involves the whole company and has to be perfectly aligned. The book is full of wise advices, best practices, examples and means to self-evaluate and compare with one's industry leaders.

Second contribution, that is the logical consequence of the first : the concept of service. Marketing becomes service. Understand : instead of saying "look at how great my product is", say "How can I help ?". Of course it applies to people who are already customers to make them stay and spread the word, but it's also an exemplary attitude towards those who may become customers in the future. In fact some companies already got it. And if I come back to my last dummy case, AirSocial would be a company that empowers its employees, not AirShy. That said, the question of knowing if service is replacing marketing or marketing has to learn service is still open.

Enough reasons to buy a book that, for onces, tackle the customer relationship issue from another standpoint than futile and lovely conversations in isolation.

That said, it makes us wonder about many things. The assumption is that there are HEROs (Highly Empowered and Ressourceful Operatives), or people who want to become HEROs, in organizations, and that they need to be supported by the management, by IT ect.. But it's obisous than any HERO may need some help from his no-HERO colleagues, those who only want to do their job as they were told to do it, without taking initatives and risk. What to doin this case ? The non written conclusion of "Empower" is that service is not only about customers but that anyone in the company is an internal customer that needs empowered colleagues, and that, in the end, the very notion of collaboration in the workplace may be replaced by service too.

Months ago, John Chambers was talking (among other) about "Everything as a service". Here we are, and "Empowered" indirectly lays the first brick of the concept of Service Economy. Not the way it's been thought for decades, but the way it should be.

Get it on the "empowered" micro-site : http://www.forrester.com/empowered

Share and Enjoy:

Tags: collaboration , customer care , customer relationship , customer service , Empowered , forrester , governance , HERO , IT , legal , maketing , management , risk , security , service , service economy , service marketing , social crm , social media

(Source: Bertrand Duperrin's Notepad)

[Post] Empowered : le manifeste du marketing (voire de l'économie) de service

Bertrand Duperrin — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 07:00:24 GMT

Je viens de finir la lecture d'Empowered de Josh Bernoff et Ted Schadler qui est en quelque sorte la suite de Groundswell qui avait connu un succès remarquable en son temps. Pour être honnête j'avais été relativement déçu par Groundswell. D'accord il s'agissait d'une photographie lucide de l'internet d'aujourd'hui, une photographie qui, soit dit en passant, devrait encore être regardée par de nombreux décideurs tant le décalage entre les usages du web et la compréhension qu'en ont un grand nombre de décideurs reste impressionnant. Mais au delà j'avais été déçu par les conclusions : bien sur il faut y aller, bien sur il y a des méthodes pour y arriver...mais ensuite ? Rien ne sert d'aller copiner avec l'internaute si c'est pour ne rien en sortir de valorisable, tant pour lui que pour l'entreprise.

Et bien c'est justement la dimension nouvelle apportée par "Empowered" : on sort de la sympathique discussion sur le web pour rentrer dans le dur : le réalignement nécessaire de l'entreprise sur la satisfaction du besoin client. Le postulat de départ est simple mais indiscutable : devant un client qui peut agir, prendre la parole, suggérer, comparer et impacter, le cas échéant, la réputation de l'entreprise, il faut des employés capables de se battre avec les mêmes armes. Comprenez : utiliser ses outils, le rencontrer sur son terrain et prendre les initiatives qu'il convient pour le satisfaire. De plus en plus le client trouvera la réponse à son besoin dans une initiative individualisée et faite sur mesure d'un collaborateur plutôt que dans la réponse généraliste et standardisée d'une entreprise qui essaie d'avoir réponse à tout sans avoir à trouver une réponse pour chacun.

Encore faut il pour cela que le collaborateur en question ait envie de le faire, et que l'entreprise non seulement ne lui mettre pas les bâtons dans les roues mais, au contraire, le mette dans les meilleures dispositions pour y parvenir. Et là on commence à aborder des logiques de management et de gouvernance informatique, de manière lucide et pragmatique. Bien sur certaines suggestions vont mettre mal à l'aise quelques organisations ancrées dans leurs vieilles certitudes mais elles sont faites avec lucidité et sont argumentées. Il n'est pas question d'abandonner tout contrôle et laisser faire n'importe quoi mais de faciliter dans un cadre sécurisé, tant au niveau légal qu'au niveau de la sécurité informatique. D'ailleurs, et c'est un bémol salutaire apporté à une forme de pensée dominante on reconnait que le collaborateur qui agit ainsi puisse être un danger pour lui et l'entreprise et qu'il convient de gérer un certain nombre de risques. C'est le premier grand apport de ce livre : pour une fois on ne traite pas le marketing comme une bulle isolée mais on remonte plus haut à l'intérieur de l'organisation pour aligner toute la chaine. Et le livre regorge d'exemples, de conseils, de bonnes pratiques et de moyens de s'auto-évaluer et se comparer aux leaders de son secteur.

Second apport, qui découle du premier, la notion de service. Le marketing devient du service. Comprenez, plutôt que dire "ils sont beaux mes produits" on dit "que puis-je faire pour vous". Bien sur cela s'applique aux clients acquis pour qu'ils le restent et prêchent la bonne parole, mais cela a également valeur d'exemplarité pour ceux qui se demandent s'ils vont le devenir. Tiens d'ailleurs certains l'avaient déjà compris et d'autres pas. Et si je reprend mon autre cas fictif, Airsocial serait une compagnie qui "empower" ses salariés au contraire d'AirShy. Après le débat reste d'ouvert de savoir si le service se substitue au marketing ou si le marketing apprend le service.

Suffisamment de raisons pour se procurer un ouvrage qui pour une fois aborde la relation client autrement que sous l'angle du brassage de vent bon enfant en vase clos.

Maintenant cela nous amène à réfléchir sur pas mal de choses. Le postulat est qu'il existe dans l'entreprise des HERO (Highly Empowered and Ressourceful Operatives), ou plutôt des personnes qui ont la volonté de le devenir et qu'il faut aider dans cette démarche, pas sur celui que tout le monde est potentiellement un HERO, ce qui est une vision réaliste. Il envisage donc une relation entre le client et le HERO, lequel HERO doit être soutenu par le management, l'IT etc... Mais il est évident que le HERO peut avoir besoin de ses collègues qui eux ne sont pas HERO...ils veulent juste faire leur travail comme on leur a dit de le faire, sans prendre de risque et sans en faire plus. Que faire dans ce cas ? La conclusion non écrite de Empowered est que le service ne concerne pas que le client, mais chacun a vocation a devenir un client interne, aidé par des collègues "empoweré" et qu'au final, la notion de collaboration même à l'intérieur de l'entreprise risque d'être remplacée par celle de service.

Il y a quelques temps John Chambers parlait (entre autres) de "everything as a service". Nous y voilà et "Empowered" pose, indirectement, la première brique de la notion d'économie du service. Pas comme on la comprend depuis 30 ans, mais comme elle devrait être.

Procurez vous sur le microsite dédié : http://www.forrester.com/empowered

Partagez cet article avec votre réseau:

Articles sur le même sujet

(Source: Bloc-Notes de Bertrand Duperrin)

[Post] Picture of the week #7 : It's easier to go through Harvard than the ordinary

Bertrand Duperrin — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 14:00:18 GMT

It's easier to go through Harvard than the ordinary

Charles de Gaulle

Illustration from the book "The Golden Rules for Success".

Thanks to Thierry d'Auzers for this excellent book, the rights of use and Dimitri Tolstoï for the pictures.

Offer yourself The Golden rules for Success.

Browse the previously published pictures of the week.

Get the iPhone or Ipad App.

Share and Enjoy:

No tag for this post.

(Source: Bertrand Duperrin's Notepad)

[Post] L'image de la semaine #7 : Il est plus facile de sortir de Polytechnique...

Bertrand Duperrin — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Il est plus facile de sortir de Polytechnique que de sortir de l'ordinaire

Charles de Gaulle

llustration issue du livre "Les règles d'or du Succès".

Merci à Thierry d'Auzers pour cet excellent ouvrage, pour les droits d'utilisation, et à Dimitri Tolstoï pour les illustrations.

Offrez vous "les règles d'or du succès"

Consultez et partagez les images des "règles" d'or avec votre iPhone ou votre Ipad.

Rejoignez le groupe Facebook des Règles d'Or du Succès.

Regardez les images de la semaine déjà publiées.

Partagez cet article avec votre réseau:

Articles sur le même sujet

(Source: Bloc-Notes de Bertrand Duperrin)

[Post] Links for this week (weekly)

Bertrand Duperrin — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 03:30:26 GMT

Meaningful metrics to quantify ROI for KM and Enterprise 2.0
"Recently some select firms have forgone the necessity to prove return on investment (ROI), for KM, portal and Enterprise 2.0. However for the vast majority, ROI justification remains a constant. In this session at the 2010 ILTA Conference, the panel examined the basics of metrics, how to measure productivity rather than busyness, how to measure engagement and concrete ways to measure portal and Enterprise 2.0 applications.

As a baseline understanding for this discussion, metrics are numbers to gauge progress, i.e. a quantifiable means to measure if there is a move from one point to another. Firms engage in this activity to evaluate success and decide what to fund."

tags: enterprise2.0 portals KM ROI metrics
Atlassian's Big Experiment with Performance Reviews - Annotated
"I'm happy to announce that we are undertaking a thorough, public trial of an alternative to the traditional performance review.
ratings pic.pptx.jpgDo you ever wonder if and how you could call a halt to your performance review process? Do you think traditional processes are marred by the distribution curve (and forced rankings), huge time investments and low impact on performance improvements? Maybe you agree that your processes have their faults, but you think that it's not sensible to abolish performance appraisals altogether or replace them with coaching sessions."

tags: performancereview performanceappraisal hr hr2.0 coaching review peerreview
- o, what was the problem? In short, twice a year the model did exactly the opposite to what we wanted to accomplish. Instead of an inspiring discussion about how to enhance people's performance, the reviews caused disruptions, anxiety and de-motivated team members and managers. Also, even though our model was extremely lean and simple, the time investment was significant.
- We'll stop paying individual performance bonuses. Instead, we'll give everyone a salary bump (similar to Netflix's approach, paying top market salaries rather than bonuses).
- Every six months, managers and team members use a one-on-one catch up to discuss their performance and how often they have challenged themselves in the last six months. Unlike in traditional performance reviews, there will be no requirements to write lengthy written assessments in preparation for the catch up
- At the beginning of each six month period, we'd like everyone to focus on some personal areas where they can challenge themselves either by capitalising on activities they already love or by improving a weakness.
- Also, whilst we have been pretty good in concentrating on people's 'weaknesses', we seldom focus on developing areas that people are intrinsically motivated by. Research shows that people don't change that much. Put simply, we may be wasting time by only concentrating on flaws. Instead, we will make a shift where we can try to enhance existing strengths to make full use of them
Employees Hold the Key to Innovation - WSJ.com - Annotated
"Innovation communities are a way of giving new shape and purpose to knowledge that your employees already possess. The detailed discussions that take place, led by senior managers, often represent a company's most productive and economical engine for increased profits."

tags: innovation communities conversations productdevelopment measurement value
- CREATE THE SPACE TO INNOVATE. Line managers and employees occupied with operational issues normally don't have the time to sit around and discuss ideas that lead to cross-organizational innovation. Innovation communities create a space in which employees from across the organization can exchange ideas.
- GET A BROAD VARIETY OF VIEWPOINTS. It's essential to involve people from different functions, locations and ranks, not only for their unique perspectives, but also to ensure buy-in throughout the company afterward. Innovation communities focus on creating enthusiasm as well as new products.
- CREATE A CONVERSATION BETWEEN SENIOR MANAGEMENT AND PARTICIPANTS. By definition, innovation communities can't work in isolation: To create sustainable cross-organizational innovation, it's important that ideas flow to senior managers.
- PARTICIPANTS SHOULD BE PULLED TO JOIN, NOT PUSHED. Members need to be enthusiastic about participating. Employees can't be forced to reveal their thoughts or be imaginative.
- MEASUREMENT IS KEY. Innovation communities are sustainable only if they can produce demonstrable value. Otherwise senior management loses interest.
How Millennials' Sharing Habits Can Benefit Organizations - Annotated
"The Pew Internet and American Life Project recently asked a large group of experts if they thought Millennials would grow out of their currently strong penchant for online sharing and self-revelation. A strong majority of this group — 67% — said that this would not be the case, and that Generation Y would keep sharing as it aged."

tags: generationy sharing
- As this happens, two broad benefits materialize. First, people who narrate their work become helpful to the rest of the organization, because the digital trail they leave makes others more efficient.
This Y Generation thing is nonsense - Annotated
"I don't know how many times I've read alarmist material that says Gen Y, millennials or whatever they're now called are going to change the workplace beyond recognition. It's nonsense. "

tags: generationy humanresources millenials
- The fact that change is a constant is nothing new. The pace of change may be accelerating but that doesn't necessarily correlate with seismic changes in work practices though it might signal changes in buying behaviours.
- I worry that Gen Y is an entitlement generation where work is not a priority and where dependency upon state and family are genuine issue
- The idea widely spread that Gen Y wants to collaborate and that peer recommendation is their normal way of engaging in consumption is again
- Rigour in understanding what is going is being eschewed for popularity and plugging into fleeting sentiment rather than addressing the deeper issues of the day.
- Invention, innovation and world class thinking is not restricted to the Gen Y'ers. Most of my peers are Gen X, Boomers and almost all have some reasonable claim to genuine influence across all generations
Six Fundamental Shifts in the Way We Work - Annotated
"We thought we would kick off our new postings by summarizing some of the ideas from Pull that resonated the most in our many conversations from the last few months. from The Power of Pull."

tags: work management value asia knowledge socialnetworks push pull innovation collaboration passion ROA training talents
- he average return on assets (ROA) of US companies has steadily fallen to almost one quarter of what it was in 1965. We're running faster, but still losing ground. There is no sign of this long-term erosion flattening out, much less turning around.
- Value ain't where it used to be. Competition is not only intensifying (pdf), it's changing the source of value creation from stocks to flows of knowledge, and the means for value creation from push to pull.
- The collaboration curve supplants the experience curve. We may, for the first time, have an opportunity to turn diminishing returns performance improvement into increasing returns.
- As it becomes increasingly possible to scale the number of connections and interactions between participants in a given environment, however, a new kind of performance curve is emerging: the collaboration curve. This is characterized by increasing returns: the more participants — and interactions between those participants
- In part, the paradox arises because executives tend to focus on talent acquisition and retention, but do not invest much time on talent development throughout the firm. When they think about talent development, they spend time designing training programs rather than re-thinking the work environment to accelerate talent development
Thinking about your organization as a network - Annotated
"The Internet is ultimately about sharing knowledge, making connections and collaborating to put knowledge to work. This makes it the platform for much of what your organization will do in coming years. But the Internet is the exception to the rule as networks go. Most networks are smaller, with limited size and, usually, a specific purpose. Every organization today is itself a network that is made up of many smaller networks. This means that, without a doubt, you need to understand networks. "

tags: networks internet organization processes humancapital relationshipcapital structuralcapital
- And you need to learn to think of your organization as a network, your people as participants in networks and your work processes as themselves as networks.
- This form of model shows the unique combination that your organization creates by connecting human and relationship capital through structural capital.
- The knowledge factory includes a series of processes (structural capital) that bridge human and relationship capital. Each one of these processes is essentially its own network.
IDC offers an impartial social business framework | ZDNet - Annotated
"The social business analyst team at IDC, led by Michael Fauscette, has stepped in to fill the need for an impartial framework, and currently offers its document as a free download. This image shows the IDC social business framework:"

tags: socialbusiness socialbusinessframework framework
The End of Management - WSJ.com - Annotated
"But can this great 20th century innovation survive and thrive in the 21st? Evidence suggests: Probably not. "Modern" management is nearing its existential moment."

tags: management managers bureaucracy change transactioncosts coase resources resourceallocation costallocation
- Corporations are bureaucracies and managers are bureaucrats. Their fundamental tendency is toward self-perpetuation. They are, almost by definition, resistant to change. They were designed and tasked, not with reinforcing market forces, but with supplanting and even resisting the market.
- The weakness of managed corporations in dealing with accelerating change is only half the double-flanked attack on traditional notions of corporate management. The other half comes from the erosion of the fundamental justification for corporations in the first place.
- He argued corporations were necessary because of what he called "transaction costs." It was simply too complicated and too costly to search for and find the right worker at the right moment for any given task, or to search for supplies, or to renegotiate prices, police performance and protect trade secrets in an open marketplace. The corporation might not be as good at allocating labor and capital as the marketplace; it made up for those weaknesses by reducing transaction cost
- Complicated enterprises, like maintaining Wikipedia or building a Linux operating system, now can be accomplished with little or no corporate management structure at all.
- They believe corporate hierarchies will disappear, as individuals are empowered to work together in creating "a new era, perhaps even a golden one, on par with the Italian renaissance or the rise of Athenian democracy."
- Transaction costs are rapidly diminishing. And as a result, everything we learned in the last century about managing large corporations is in need of a serious rethink. We have both a need and an opportunity to devise a new form of economic organization, and a new science of management, that can deal with the breakneck realities of 21st century change.
- The new model will have to be more like the marketplace, and less like corporations of the past. It will need to be flexible, agile, able to quickly adjust to market developments, and ruthless in reallocating resources to new opportunities.
- Resource allocation will be one of the biggest challenges. The beauty of markets is that, over time, they tend to ensure that both people and money end up employed in the highest-value enterprises. In corporations, decisions about allocating resources are made by people with a vested interest in the status quo.
- Because engineers don't have to compete for funds, the Google approach doesn't have the discipline of a true marketplace, and it hasn't yet proven itself as a way to generate incremental profits. But it does allow new ideas to get some attention.
- Information gathering also needs to be broader and more inclusive. Former Procter & Gamble CEO A.G. Lafley's demand that the company cull product ideas from outside the company, rather than developing them all from within, was a step in this direction. (It even has a website for submitting ideas.) The new model will have to go further. New mechanisms will have to be created for harnessing the "wisdom of crowds." Feedback loops will need to be built that allow products and services to constantly evolve in response to new information. Change, innovation, adaptability, all have to become orders of the day.
Web 2.0 en entreprise : les salariés ignorent les consignes de sécurité - Solutions-Logiciels.com
"Or mettre en oeuvre une solution de sécurité flexible capable d'administrer les outils du Web 2.0 exige davantage de visibilité, ainsi qu'une plus large sensibilisation des utilisateurs et un contrôle granulaire des applications. Il s'agit à la fois d'un défi technologique et d'une question d'éducation des employés. » "

tags: web2.0 ITdepartment IT security

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Share and Enjoy:

No tag for this post.

(Source: Bertrand Duperrin's Notepad)

[Post] Liens de la semaine (weekly)

Bertrand Duperrin — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 03:30:10 GMT

Meaningful metrics to quantify ROI for KM and Enterprise 2.0

"Recently some select firms have forgone the necessity to prove return on investment (ROI), for KM, portal and Enterprise 2.0. However for the vast majority, ROI justification remains a constant. In this session at the 2010 ILTA Conference, the panel examined the basics of metrics, how to measure productivity rather than busyness, how to measure engagement and concrete ways to measure portal and Enterprise 2.0 applications.

As a baseline understanding for this discussion, metrics are numbers to gauge progress, i.e. a quantifiable means to measure if there is a move from one point to another. Firms engage in this activity to evaluate success and decide what to fund."

tags: enterprise2.0 portals KM ROI metrics
Atlassian's Big Experiment with Performance Reviews - Annotated

"I'm happy to announce that we are undertaking a thorough, public trial of an alternative to the traditional performance review.
ratings pic.pptx.jpgDo you ever wonder if and how you could call a halt to your performance review process? Do you think traditional processes are marred by the distribution curve (and forced rankings), huge time investments and low impact on performance improvements? Maybe you agree that your processes have their faults, but you think that it's not sensible to abolish performance appraisals altogether or replace them with coaching sessions."

tags: performancereview performanceappraisal hr hr2.0 coaching review peerreview
- o, what was the problem? In short, twice a year the model did exactly the opposite to what we wanted to accomplish. Instead of an inspiring discussion about how to enhance people's performance, the reviews caused disruptions, anxiety and de-motivated team members and managers. Also, even though our model was extremely lean and simple, the time investment was significant.
- We'll stop paying individual performance bonuses. Instead, we'll give everyone a salary bump (similar to Netflix's approach, paying top market salaries rather than bonuses).
- Every six months, managers and team members use a one-on-one catch up to discuss their performance and how often they have challenged themselves in the last six months. Unlike in traditional performance reviews, there will be no requirements to write lengthy written assessments in preparation for the catch up
- At the beginning of each six month period, we'd like everyone to focus on some personal areas where they can challenge themselves either by capitalising on activities they already love or by improving a weakness.
- Also, whilst we have been pretty good in concentrating on people's 'weaknesses', we seldom focus on developing areas that people are intrinsically motivated by. Research shows that people don't change that much. Put simply, we may be wasting time by only concentrating on flaws. Instead, we will make a shift where we can try to enhance existing strengths to make full use of them
Employees Hold the Key to Innovation - WSJ.com - Annotated

"Innovation communities are a way of giving new shape and purpose to knowledge that your employees already possess. The detailed discussions that take place, led by senior managers, often represent a company's most productive and economical engine for increased profits."

tags: innovation communities conversations productdevelopment measurement value
- CREATE THE SPACE TO INNOVATE. Line managers and employees occupied with operational issues normally don't have the time to sit around and discuss ideas that lead to cross-organizational innovation. Innovation communities create a space in which employees from across the organization can exchange ideas.
- GET A BROAD VARIETY OF VIEWPOINTS. It's essential to involve people from different functions, locations and ranks, not only for their unique perspectives, but also to ensure buy-in throughout the company afterward. Innovation communities focus on creating enthusiasm as well as new products.
- CREATE A CONVERSATION BETWEEN SENIOR MANAGEMENT AND PARTICIPANTS. By definition, innovation communities can't work in isolation: To create sustainable cross-organizational innovation, it's important that ideas flow to senior managers.
- PARTICIPANTS SHOULD BE PULLED TO JOIN, NOT PUSHED. Members need to be enthusiastic about participating. Employees can't be forced to reveal their thoughts or be imaginative.
- MEASUREMENT IS KEY. Innovation communities are sustainable only if they can produce demonstrable value. Otherwise senior management loses interest.
How Millennials' Sharing Habits Can Benefit Organizations - Annotated

"The Pew Internet and American Life Project recently asked a large group of experts if they thought Millennials would grow out of their currently strong penchant for online sharing and self-revelation. A strong majority of this group — 67% — said that this would not be the case, and that Generation Y would keep sharing as it aged."

tags: generationy sharing
- As this happens, two broad benefits materialize. First, people who narrate their work become helpful to the rest of the organization, because the digital trail they leave makes others more efficient.
This Y Generation thing is nonsense - Annotated

"I don't know how many times I've read alarmist material that says Gen Y, millennials or whatever they're now called are going to change the workplace beyond recognition. It's nonsense. "

tags: generationy humanresources millenials
- The fact that change is a constant is nothing new. The pace of change may be accelerating but that doesn't necessarily correlate with seismic changes in work practices though it might signal changes in buying behaviours.
- I worry that Gen Y is an entitlement generation where work is not a priority and where dependency upon state and family are genuine issue
- The idea widely spread that Gen Y wants to collaborate and that peer recommendation is their normal way of engaging in consumption is again
- Rigour in understanding what is going is being eschewed for popularity and plugging into fleeting sentiment rather than addressing the deeper issues of the day.
- Invention, innovation and world class thinking is not restricted to the Gen Y'ers. Most of my peers are Gen X, Boomers and almost all have some reasonable claim to genuine influence across all generations
Six Fundamental Shifts in the Way We Work - Annotated

"We thought we would kick off our new postings by summarizing some of the ideas from Pull that resonated the most in our many conversations from the last few months. from The Power of Pull."

tags: work management value asia knowledge socialnetworks push pull innovation collaboration passion ROA training talents
- he average return on assets (ROA) of US companies has steadily fallen to almost one quarter of what it was in 1965. We're running faster, but still losing ground. There is no sign of this long-term erosion flattening out, much less turning around.
- Value ain't where it used to be. Competition is not only intensifying (pdf), it's changing the source of value creation from stocks to flows of knowledge, and the means for value creation from push to pull.
- The collaboration curve supplants the experience curve. We may, for the first time, have an opportunity to turn diminishing returns performance improvement into increasing returns.
- As it becomes increasingly possible to scale the number of connections and interactions between participants in a given environment, however, a new kind of performance curve is emerging: the collaboration curve. This is characterized by increasing returns: the more participants — and interactions between those participants
- In part, the paradox arises because executives tend to focus on talent acquisition and retention, but do not invest much time on talent development throughout the firm. When they think about talent development, they spend time designing training programs rather than re-thinking the work environment to accelerate talent development
Thinking about your organization as a network - Annotated

"The Internet is ultimately about sharing knowledge, making connections and collaborating to put knowledge to work. This makes it the platform for much of what your organization will do in coming years. But the Internet is the exception to the rule as networks go. Most networks are smaller, with limited size and, usually, a specific purpose. Every organization today is itself a network that is made up of many smaller networks. This means that, without a doubt, you need to understand networks. "

tags: networks internet organization processes humancapital relationshipcapital structuralcapital
- And you need to learn to think of your organization as a network, your people as participants in networks and your work processes as themselves as networks.
- This form of model shows the unique combination that your organization creates by connecting human and relationship capital through structural capital.
- The knowledge factory includes a series of processes (structural capital) that bridge human and relationship capital. Each one of these processes is essentially its own network.
IDC offers an impartial social business framework | ZDNet - Annotated

"The social business analyst team at IDC, led by Michael Fauscette, has stepped in to fill the need for an impartial framework, and currently offers its document as a free download. This image shows the IDC social business framework:"

tags: socialbusiness socialbusinessframework framework
The End of Management - WSJ.com - Annotated

"But can this great 20th century innovation survive and thrive in the 21st? Evidence suggests: Probably not. "Modern" management is nearing its existential moment."

tags: management managers bureaucracy change transactioncosts coase resources resourceallocation costallocation
- Corporations are bureaucracies and managers are bureaucrats. Their fundamental tendency is toward self-perpetuation. They are, almost by definition, resistant to change. They were designed and tasked, not with reinforcing market forces, but with supplanting and even resisting the market.
- The weakness of managed corporations in dealing with accelerating change is only half the double-flanked attack on traditional notions of corporate management. The other half comes from the erosion of the fundamental justification for corporations in the first place.
- He argued corporations were necessary because of what he called "transaction costs." It was simply too complicated and too costly to search for and find the right worker at the right moment for any given task, or to search for supplies, or to renegotiate prices, police performance and protect trade secrets in an open marketplace. The corporation might not be as good at allocating labor and capital as the marketplace; it made up for those weaknesses by reducing transaction cost
- Complicated enterprises, like maintaining Wikipedia or building a Linux operating system, now can be accomplished with little or no corporate management structure at all.
- They believe corporate hierarchies will disappear, as individuals are empowered to work together in creating "a new era, perhaps even a golden one, on par with the Italian renaissance or the rise of Athenian democracy."
- Transaction costs are rapidly diminishing. And as a result, everything we learned in the last century about managing large corporations is in need of a serious rethink. We have both a need and an opportunity to devise a new form of economic organization, and a new science of management, that can deal with the breakneck realities of 21st century change.
- The new model will have to be more like the marketplace, and less like corporations of the past. It will need to be flexible, agile, able to quickly adjust to market developments, and ruthless in reallocating resources to new opportunities.
- Resource allocation will be one of the biggest challenges. The beauty of markets is that, over time, they tend to ensure that both people and money end up employed in the highest-value enterprises. In corporations, decisions about allocating resources are made by people with a vested interest in the status quo.
- Because engineers don't have to compete for funds, the Google approach doesn't have the discipline of a true marketplace, and it hasn't yet proven itself as a way to generate incremental profits. But it does allow new ideas to get some attention.
- Information gathering also needs to be broader and more inclusive. Former Procter & Gamble CEO A.G. Lafley's demand that the company cull product ideas from outside the company, rather than developing them all from within, was a step in this direction. (It even has a website for submitting ideas.) The new model will have to go further. New mechanisms will have to be created for harnessing the "wisdom of crowds." Feedback loops will need to be built that allow products and services to constantly evolve in response to new information. Change, innovation, adaptability, all have to become orders of the day.
Web 2.0 en entreprise : les salariés ignorent les consignes de sécurité - Solutions-Logiciels.com

"Or mettre en oeuvre une solution de sécurité flexible capable d'administrer les outils du Web 2.0 exige davantage de visibilité, ainsi qu'une plus large sensibilisation des utilisateurs et un contrôle granulaire des applications. Il s'agit à la fois d'un défi technologique et d'une question d'éducation des employés. » "

tags: web2.0 ITdepartment IT security

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Partagez cet article avec votre réseau:

Articles sur le même sujet

(Source: Bloc-Notes de Bertrand Duperrin)

[Post] Does your enterprise social network really make you more productive ?

Bertrand Duperrin — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 14:00:03 GMT

Summary : one of the most frequent arguments used in favor of the implementation of an internal social network is productivity improvement through the ability to access and mobilize resources more easily. While that's an undisputable truth at the individual level (and provided the tool is used by enough people), it does not mean that the company is made more productive : optimizing tasks does and optimizing the chain of tasks that lead to the final deliverable, what is the only thing that counts, are not the same thing. So, companies will have to consider their whole production processus and identify their bottlenecks that prevent the chain from taking the most of local improvements.

One of the promises that usually come with a social network (and even with "anything 2.0″) is that some time will be saved. Since, in order to deliver the expected results, people and knowledges have to be put together in order to make progress along a processus, the more these resources are available and accessible, the faster problems are solved, solutions are found and the better decisions are.

So, here's a very usual indicator : if any employee losts 38 minutes a day to find information, documents or people, if he can save 5, 10 or 15 minutes a day, it means x minutes a week, y minutes a year, what can easily be turned into money. By saving 5 minutes a day, your employees will make you save billions every year.

Hearing such a thing, and even if the promise is seducing and the logics credible, many managers feel there's something wrong and they're often right : 5 minutes saved every day, or even 30 may equal to...no saving for the company. But we must not throw the baby out with the bathwater : it's possible to deliver the promise provided we focus on the right thing.

5 minutes saved at the employee level are...saved at the employee level

So imagine that an employee can save these much-touted 5 minutes a day ? Does it mean that he'll be productive 1/2h more a week ? 5 minutes is the time for a coffee break and there are many chances he will use the time he saved for his own purpose. He may also use it to cool off, knowing that even unconsciously he'll adapt his pace to deliver at the due date. Son if he realizes he can save time on some tasks there are many chances that he'll take advantage of that to slow down or start later. I don't even mention the case when these five minutes are 20 times 15 seconds...

Of course that's a positive things for the organization if employees can cool off, take the time to discuss etc... But that's not what they were expecting at the beginning..

Optimizing tasks is useless

In fact, the whole value proposal relies on the optimization of a given task : search (whatever people are looking for). Yet, search is only one task, even a sub-task, in a more global processus.

Finding the right information or the right person helps to achieved any assigned task faster. So they can start the next earlier and so on and, at the end of the week, they would be more productive. That's good for their individual evaluation and they'll even be rewarded. But what's the benefit for the organization ? None. The organization may even lose by rewarding people for something that did not change anything?

Generally, people are a link in a much longer chain. The task one achieves is necessary for another to start his part of the work and so son. If the first does things faster but the one who have to carry on or the manager that has to validate are not able to react as fast, some time will be saved for one employee but nothing will change for the company because the overall performance of the whole processus won't be improved and, at the end, the client (internal or external) won't be served faster. The only consequence of one employee being more productive is more files, emails and to dos for the others. That increases the pressure on the othere, brings more confusion, make things more complicated because they have to re-priorize things continuoulsy and disperse. In the worst case they'll try to increase theyr own pace to keep up the with other's and make more mistakes.

Optimizing people's work at an individual scale seldom brings the expected results if the processus is not rethought and limiting factors, bottlenecks are not dealed with. It implies individual needs and actions are seen as understood as a part of a longer process that is sometimes formalized, sometimes informal (so to be identified).

It reminds me of a situation I had to deal with a few years ago. A manager was complaining that, despite of all the many undertaken efforts, the productivity of his team was not improving. Of course, he was thinking that employees had to be blamed on for that while the whole staff was close to explode due to the impressive amount of work they had to do and the high level of pressure. At the end, it was made clear that, since the manager had to validate all the files his staff has worked on before pushing it to another team...he didn't have enough time to deal with all his team was producing. All the efforts the make the team more productive were dashed because he didn't paid attention to his own role in the processus.

Understanding the whole processus is mandatory

So, it's easy to understand that, once people's day to day work has been explored with them and that some new practices that may make them more efficient, productive, have been identified, it's important to think it as a part of a more global chain, to understand what one's job serves (and whom), and look for bottlenecks. These bottlecks limit the overall performance of the chain and are often people at the center of a network (even informal), those most of the information has to go through. So they may be managers.

Then, each case has its own story, context and solution. Maybe the decision making process is not relevant, maybe an "a priori" validation is not necessary since corrections can be made afterwards when needed, maybe this part of the job can be handle by other people, maybe the only fact he can access his business tools while away from the office would be enough, maybe the "innovation board" does not meet often enough to deal with all the ideas that are submitted....

"Anything 2.0″ can make many things more fluid but won't solve the bottlneck question that bridle "anyhting 2.0″ and prevent it from bringing significant performance improvements. Now it's up to HR and managers to deal with that.

Finally it's a very old debate that is much older than enterprise 2.0, it's all about the pursuit of a local maximum vs. a global optimum.

Anyway, measuring any link of the chain is often misleading : what has to be optimized and measured is the whole chain.

Share and Enjoy:

Tags: bottlenecks , enterprise 2.0 , measurement , organization , performance , process , processus , productivity , social networks , task , time

(Source: Bertrand Duperrin's Notepad)

[Post] Votre réseau social interne vous rend il vraiment plus productif ?

Bertrand Duperrin — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 07:00:49 GMT

Résumé : un des arguments les plus fréquents pour la mise en place d'un réseau social interne est l'amélioration de la productivité par la capacité d'accéder et mobiliser plus rapidement des ressources. Si c'est une vérité indéniable au niveau de tâches individuelles (et à condition que l'outil soit utilisé de la même manière par un certain nombre de personnes), cela ne veut pas systématiquement dire que l'entreprise en devient plus productive : optimiser des tâches ne veut pas dire optimiser la chaine de tâches qui conduit au livrable final et qui est in fine la seule chose qui compte. Il s'agit donc d'embrasser le productif de "production" dans son ensemble et identifier les points, goulots, qui empêchent les améliorations locales, individuelles, d'impacter toute la chaine.

Une des promesses qui viennent le plus rapidement avec l'arrivée d'un réseau social dans l'entreprise (ou de toute "chose 2.0″) est le gain de temps généré. Puisque pour "délivrer" le résultat attendu il faut, hors choses totalement automatisables, assembler des savoirs et des individus pour avancer au long d'un processus, plus ces personnes, informations, savoirs sont disponibles et accessibles plus on résoud les problèmes vite, trouve des solutions vite et prend les décisions appropriées.

Il est donc un indicateur que l'on retrouve fréquemment pour nous démontrer les bienfaits de la chose : si un salarié lambda perd 38 minutes à chercher de l'information, des documents ou des personnes chaque jour et qu'on lui permet de gagner 5, 10 ou 15 minutes au quotidien, cela fait x minutes / semaine, donc y minutes / an...ce qu'on traduit en plus en espèces sonnantes et trébuchantes en fonction du taux horaire du salarié. En gagnant chaque jour 5 minutes, vos collaborateurs font gagner des milliards à votre entreprise chaque année.

Devant un tel énoncé, même s'ils sont séduits par les résultats et convaincus par la logique, beaucoup de décideurs tiquent devant un raccourci aussi facile et ils ont raison : 5 minutes de gagnées chaque jour peuvent ne rien faire gagner du tout à l'entreprise. Mais ne jetons pas le bebé avec l'eau du bain : il est également possible de rendre la promesse vraie à condition de regarder plus loin que le bout de son nez.

5 minutes de gagnées par le collaborateur sont gagnées...par le collaborateur

Imaginons qu'un collaborateur gagne ces fameuses 5 minutes par jour. Va-t-il pour autant être productif 1/2 heure de plus par semaine ? 5 minutes c'est le temps d'une pause café ou d'une cigarette, donc il y a fort a parier qu'il va chercher à s'approprier le temps ainsi gagné. Il peut également en profiter pour souffler un peu, prendre un peu de temps sachant qu'inconsciemment il "calibre" son rythme pour faire les choses dans les délais impartis donc s'il perçoit qu'il peut gagner du temps sur certaines tâches il y a des chances qu'il en profite, sans s'en rendre compte, pour ralentir ou démarrer une tâche plus tard. Je ne parle même pas de l'hypothèse où ces 5 minutes soient en fait 20 fois 15 secondes auquel cas....

Bien sur l'entreprise y gagne si le collaborateur peut souffler, prendre le temps de discuter avec ses collègues etc... Mais ça n'est pas franchement ce qu'elle attendait au départ.

Optimiser les tâches est inutile

En fait toute la proposition de valeur tient sur l'optimisation d'une tâche donnée : la recherche (peu importe ce qu'elle concerne). Or la recherche n'est qu'une tâche, je dirai même une sous-tache, dans un processus plus global.

Trouver l'information ou les bonnes personnes permet de terminer plus vite la tâche qui m'est assignée. Je peux donc commencer la suivante plus tôt et ainsi de suite et à la fin de la semaine j'aurais été indéniablement plus productif. C'est bien pour mon évaluation personnelle, je serai peut être même récompensé sur le long terme pour ça. Mais quel bénéfice pour l'entreprise ? Aucun. Elle peut même y perdre en me récompensant pour mon efficacité alors que pour elle cela ne change parfois (voire souvent) strictement rien.

En général on est qu'une maille dans une chaine beaucoup plus longue. Le travail que j'effectue est nécessaire pour qu'un collègue puisse démarrer sa partie du travail et ainsi de suite. En somme, si je vais plus vite mais que le collègue qui doit prendre la suite ou le manager qui va valider ne sont pas capables de réagir aussi vite, le temps n'est gagné que pour moi mais au final l'entreprise n'est pas plus avancée car la capacité de production du processus n'a pas été améliorée et, in fine, le client (qu'il soit interne ou externe) n'est pas servi plus vite. Alors bien sur en ce qui me concerne je vais plus vite...et ça donne donc des dossiers, emails, "to do" qui s'entassent chez mes collègues, accroissent la pression, la confusion, complique leur organisation personnelle car ils doivent sans cesse reprioriser voire se disperser. Au pire il accélerera la cadence au risque de mal faire son travail, de commettre erreurs et négligences pour essayer de suivre le rythme.

Optimiser le travail de chacun de manière individuelle porte donc rarement ces fruits si on ne regarde pas le processus dans son ensemble et qu'on ne s'attaque pas aux facteurs limitants, aux goulots d'étranglement. Ce qui implique de remettre les besoins et actions individuels dans le contexte d'un processus plus large, parfois formalisé, parfois informel (donc à identifier).

Cela me rappelle un cas auquel j'avais été confronté plus tôt dans ma carrière. Un manager se plaignait que malgré les efforts entrepris, la productivité de son équipe stagnait. Bien sur il rendait ses employés responsables de la situation alors qu'eux étaient au bord de l'explosion vu la charge de travail qui était la leur. Au final il est apparu que comme il devait valider chaque dossier monté pour le passer à une autre équipe....c'est lui qui n'avait plus le temps de traiter ce que produisait son équipe. Au final tous les efforts faits pour rendre les collaborateurs plus productifs étaient réduits à néant car personne ne s'était posé la question de son rôle à lui dans le processus.

Il est nécessaire de prendre le processus dans son ensemble

Vous l'avez compris, une fois qu'on revisité avec le collaborateur son quotidien et qu'on a vu quelles pratiques lui permettraient de faire mieux, d'être plus efficaces, il importe ensuite de le re-situer dans une chaine plus globale, de savoir à qui et à quoi sert son travail...et identifier les goulots d'étranglement. Ceux là, qui brident bien involontairement la performance de la chaine, sont souvent d'ailleurs les personnes au centre d'un réseau (même informel), celles par qui l'information finit toujours par transiter avant de suivre son chemin. Cela concerne donc souvent des managers.

Ensuite chaque cas à sa propre histoire, son propre contexte, sa propre solution. Peut être que le processus de décision est mal approprié, qu'une validation a priori n'est pas nécessaire dans la mesure où on peut corriger a posteriori si besoin, que d'autres personnes peuvent le décharger de certaines tâches, que s'il pouvait accéder à ses outils en déplacement tout serait résolu, que la commission "innovation" ne se réunit pas assez souvent pour traiter le nombre de propositions et d'idées etc...

"Quoi que ce soit 2.0″ peut fluidifier un grand nombre de choses mais ne résoudra pas la question des goulots qui, eux, brident le "quoi que soit 2.0″ et l'empêchent de produire des gains de performance significatifs. La balle est dans le camp des RH et du management...

Un débat finalement pas très 2.0 mais au contraire très classique sur l'opposition entre la recherche d'un maximum local et d'un optimum global...

Quoiqu'il en soit mesurer un maillon de la chaine amène souvent à se fourvoyer, c'est la chaine dans son ensemble qu'il faut mesurer et optimiser.

Partagez cet article avec votre réseau:

Articles sur le même sujet

(Source: Bloc-Notes de Bertrand Duperrin)

[Post] Engage with customers. And then ?

Bertrand Duperrin — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 21:00:29 GMT

Summary : It's obvious that the use of social media within companies and between companies and customers are not compartmentalized but complementary disciplines. If the "internal" company is more and more trying to get in touch with customers, the world of marketing struggles to make his way toward internal departments. As communication is becoming service, initiatives that target customers can't be separated from those that aim at reversing communication flows inside the organization, redefining roles and realigning the whole organization with the needs of employees who are directrly in touch with customers. To demonstrate its value, social and community makerting will have to replace "push" with "pull" not only in its interactions withn customoers but also in the way the whole organization works.

Even if the external/marketing/communication part has never been my prefered one, it has become obvious that it's impossible to dissociate the evolution of work from what's happening outside the corporate walls. First, because no company creates value on its own et a high level of internal performance is useless when a business is not as efficient with its external partners and clients that it is internally (theory of the limiting factor or bottlneck...as you prefer), second because the internal shift from push to pull logically leads to consider customers.

The time when 2.0 was either about marketing or collaboration but not both at the same time is over. Yet, the concept of enterprise 2.0 evolved overtime and everybdoy finds logical to include all external stakeholders into it, what is confirmed by the rise of social crm. But even if enterprise 2.0 is heading down toward customers, marketing struggles to head up toward internal activities.

I recently found this interesting deck about the failure of social media initiatives. It tells us that

- there's a lack of strategy (81%) and most marketers don't undestand the value of interactions...and how all these things work.

- consequently, businesses invest more on technology than on people and relationships.

Why Social Media Project
~~View more~~ ~~presentations from BSI.~~

I'd like to go a little bit further and sum it up in one sentence : when marketing and communication people use social media to communicate better and differently, there are two possibilities:

- either they (or their company) don't get it and that doesn't work.

- Or they understand how to make a good use of social media and...they deceive their customers.

My interest in everything that has wings, engines and flies made me find that a conference about social media for airlines will soon be organized. On the event website I can read

Social media for the aviation industry' will give valuable insights into the world of social media and explore how airlines can maximise the impact of different platforms to reach their customers and strengthen their brands.

I agree this is the kind of logical things that can be read about any event of this kind and what I'm going to say applies to nearly all similar initiatives. Let's sum up:

- you engage with customers in a new way on social media

- you build a close and individualized relationship with customers

- so they ask you questions, ask you to solve their problems

- and since the organization is not design to make communication people lead support teams, to let people in charge of social media take any initiative or stand on behalf of the company, customers requests are neglected or lost in the traditional channels. Marketing and communication people are directly in touch with customers but can't sole their problems and, in many cases, loose the lead on the requests that were made to them.

The question for any organization is not to know how to use social media with their customers. It's rather to know "how to build an organization that will empower those who are in touch with customers so that they can solve their problems".

If nothing is done to change the direction of internal flows, if nothing is done to empower employees (what also makes it easier for their employer to trust them), there are few chances to achieve anything significant. Communication on social media is, before all, a matter of service, support, what implies to rethink the organization consequently, to make it "pull-compatible".

We should remember that community management has to support business processes, to be a layer, a channel, an internal service and not a goal. I even illustrated this with a fictitious airline case (surprising ).

Saying that, I really appreciate a recent press release by Alcatel-Lucent , saying :

Alcatel-Lucent Genesys maps out successful social media strategy for enterprises that includes strong linkage between customer service and marketing

QED.

I'm really looking forward to seing a conference on social media and marketing where the main issue won't be "how to engage with customers" but :

"How to align the whole organization to make the value proposal of social media engagement will be so obvious for customers that they will naturally engage with businesses"'.
Share and Enjoy:

Tags: airlines , alcatel-lucent , autonomy , business process , community management , customer , customer support , empowerment , marketing , problem solving , pull , push , service oriented organization , social crm , social media , support

Related posts

Will you have to throw your marketing outside of the window ? (0)

How to understand and position enteprise 2.0 in the real enterprise (2)

From Social Media to Social CRM : a recent experience with airlines (12)

Community management and processes by the example (1)

The organizational double flip (0)

(Source: Bertrand Duperrin's Notepad)

[Post] Medias sociaux : acquérir le client...et après ?

Bertrand Duperrin — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 14:00:24 GMT

Résumé : il est clair que l'utilisation des médias sociaux entre les collaborateurs et entre entreprises et clients ne sont pas des disciplines cloisonnées mais complémentaires. Si le monde de l'entreprise "interne" tend à s'aventurer de plus en plus vers l'externe, le monde du marketing peine à faire le chemin inverse. La communication devenant du service il est aujourd'hui essentiel de ne pas séparer les initiatives à destination des clients d'une redéfinition des flux, des rôles et d'un alignement de l'organisation sur les besoins du collaborateur qui fait face au client. Le marketing "social" et "communautaire" ne prouvera sa valeur qu'en substituant le "pull" au "push" non seulement dans l'intéraction avec le client mais aussi dans le fonctionnement interne de l'organisation.

Même si la dimension externe/marketing/communication n'a jamais été mon domaine de prédilection, il est évident qu'il est difficile aujourd'hui de dissocier l'évolution du travail dans l'entreprise de ce qui se passe hors de ses murs. Tout d'abord parce qu'aucune entreprise ne crée de la richesse seule et qu'un haut niveau de performance interne est inutile dès lors qu'on est incapable de travailler avec la même efficacité avec ses partenaires et clients (théorie du facteur limitant ou du goulot comme vous préférez), ensuite parce que si on passe d'un mode de fonctionnement descendant en flux poussés à un mode en flux tirés, pousser la logique jusqu'au bout amène nécessairement à s'intéresser au client.

Il est donc loin le temps où le 2.0 se déclinait en marketing d'un coté et en collaboration de l'autre, avec une paroi étanche entre les deux. D'ailleurs le concept d'entreprise 2.0 a évolué avec le temps et tout le monde trouve logique d'y inclure toutes les parties prenantes (partenaires, clients...) et la montée en puissance d'une notion telle que social crm en est la preuve. Mais si l'entreprise 2.0 "descend" et s'aventure hors de ses murs et des préoccupations purement internes, le marketing, lui semble peiner à suivre le chemin inverse.

Gregory Pouy dans un récent billet sur l'échec des projets médias sociaux, nous explique pourquoi une récente étude donne des chiffres alarmants :

- Il n'y a pas de stratégie généralement (à 81%) et les marketers ne comprennent pas vraiment la valeur de ces échanges ni même comment cela fonctionne...
- Par conséquent, les entreprises vont investir plus sur les technologies que sur l'humain et le relationnel

Why Social Media Projects Fail?! -- A European Perspective
View more presentations from BSI.

Permettez moi d'aller un peu plus loin et de synthétiser la chose en une phrase : lorsque les communiquants utilisent ces outils pour communiquer mieux et différemment il y a deux possibilités :

- soit ils (ou leur entreprise) ne comprend pas leur spécificité et cela ne fonctionne pas.

- soit les communicants comprennent la spécificité de ces médias et...ils ne peuvent créer que de la déception.

Mon intérêt prononcé pour tout ce qui a deux ailes et un moteur m'a amené à avoir vent d'une conférence dédiée aux médias dans le monde de l'aérien. Lorsque je vais sur le site de l'événement je peux lire :

Social media for the aviation industry' will give valuable insights into the world of social media and explore how airlines can maximise the impact of different platforms to reach their customers and strengthen their brands.

Discours logique me direz vous. J'en conviens. Je ne cite ce cas qu'à titre d'exemple car la logique vaut pour la grande majorité des initiatives. Récapitulons :

- vous engagez avec vos clients une relation sur ce type de médias.

- vous créez une relation de proximité, une relation individualisée avec le client

- le client vous pose donc des questions, et demande à ce que vous résolviez ses problèmes

- et l'organisation n'étant pas pensée pour que le support soit subordonné à la communication, que ceux qui sont derrière les manettes des médias sociaux prennent des initiatives voire prennent position devant le client, leurs demandes se perdent voire sont négligées car ne passant par les canaux habituels. Le communiquant est en prise directe avec le client mais perd de vue le traitement du problème soumis et ne peut, dans le meilleur des cas, lui dire où on en est sur son cas, voire, dans le pire des cas ne peut rien faire pour lui...et n'ose pas forcément lui dire.

On en revient à ce que disait Gregory. La question pour une entreprise n'est pas tant de savoir comment utiliser au mieux les médias sociaux avec ses clients. C'est plutôt de savoir "comment créer une organisation qui permette de donner les moyens à ceux qui sont au contact des clients de régler leurs problèmes".

Si on ne repense pas la direction des flux dans l'entreprise, si on réfléchit pas à la manière de donner de l'autonomie au collaborateur, à l'"empowerer" (ce qui détermine également la confiance qu'à l'entreprise dans son salarié autonome) on ne risque pas d'aller bien loin. La communication sur les médias sociaux est avant tout une question de service, de support, ce qui impose de repenser l'organisation en fonction, de la rendre "pull compatible".

Rappelons nous que le community management a également et surtout vocation à soutenir des process, à être une couche, un canal, un service interne plutôt qu'une activité en soi. J'avais d'ailleurs (bizarrement) illustré mon propos avec un exemple aérien...fictif bien sur.

A ce titre j'ai beaucoup apprécié le ton d'un récent communiqué de presse d'Alcatel-Lucent qui disait :

Alcatel-Lucent Genesys maps out successful social media strategy for enterprises that includes strong linkage between customer service and marketing

CQFD.

J'attend donc avec impatience que la question soulevée lors d'une conférence traitant des médias sociaux pour le marketing, qu'au lieu de se demander "comment créer du lien avec le client", on pose la question essentielle :

"Comment aligner l'organisation afin que la proposition de valeur du lien soit telle que le client s'engagera naturellement dans cette forme d'intéraction nouvelle".
Partagez cet article avec votre réseau:

Articles sur le même sujet

Comprendre et positionner l'entreprise 2.0 dans l'entreprise "réelle" (2)

Vers le double salto organisationnel (1)

Management 2.0, SOO et productivité (1)

Le community management est un "processus in processum" ! (3)

L'entreprise 2.0, composante de l'entreprise globale (4)

(Source: Bloc-Notes de Bertrand Duperrin)

[Post] Picture of the week #6 : Business is only tiring...

Bertrand Duperrin — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 14:00:04 GMT

Business is only tiring when you're not doing any.

Pierre Véron

Illustration from the book "The Golden Rules for Success".

Thanks to Thierry d'Auzers for this excellent book, the rights of use and Dimitri Tolstoï for the pictures.

Offer yourself The Golden rules for Success.

Browse the previously published pictures of the week.

Get the iPhone or Ipad App.
Share and Enjoy:

Tags: business

Related posts

Will 2.0 learn the enterprise ? (0)

What kind of social networks do companies need ? (0)

People are more likely to share information if they know why (2)

Eight technology trends for business improvement (0)

2.0 has to be aware of business orientation (0)

(Source: Bertrand Duperrin's Notepad)

[Post] L'image de la semaine #6 : Les affaires ne sont vraiment fatigantes...

Bertrand Duperrin — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 07:00:55 GMT

Les affaires ne sont vraiment fatigantes que lorsqu'on n'en fait pas !

Pierre Véron

llustration issue du livre "Les règles d'or du Succès".

Merci à Thierry d'Auzers pour cet excellent ouvrage, pour les droits d'utilisation, et à Dimitri Tolstoï pour les illustrations.

Offrez vous "les règles d'or du succès"

Consultez et partagez les images des "règles" d'or avec votre iPhone ou votre Ipad.

Rejoignez le groupe Facebook des Règles d'Or du Succès.

Regardez les images de la semaine déjà publiées.
Partagez cet article avec votre réseau:

Articles sur le même sujet

No related posts.

(Source: Bloc-Notes de Bertrand Duperrin)

[Post] Liens de la semaine (weekly)

Bertrand Duperrin — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 03:30:10 GMT

Stop Making People use E2.0 - Get Perspective - Annotated

"According to many, "resistance to change" is the biggest factor inhibiting the adoption of E2.0. This is not the case. The biggest inhibitor to the adoption of E2.0 technologies is when organizations attempt to make people use E2.0 tools - "make" being the operative word. This may seem subtle, but is an extremely critical distinction that separates tremendous success from puzzling failure with these technologies."

tags: enterprise2.0 adoption implementation wording

In order to connect with the people who will ultimately touch some form of E2.0 technology, we need to rid our vocabulary of the words Wiki, Blog, Tag, RSS, Mashup, Microblogging and others that make sense to use, but mean nothing to end users. In email example above, we do not talk about SMTP servers or TCP IP, but the about the value that an email brings to communication

Alcatel-Lucent Genesys expose sa vision stratégique des médias sociaux pour les entreprises, qui établit un lien étroit entre le service client et le marketing - Annotated

Les consommateurs attendent aujourd'hui des entreprises qu'elles s'adressent à eux par le biais des médias sociaux. Or, si pratiquement toutes ont déjà tenté d'être présentes sur ces médias, les entreprises ne le font encore que de façon "artisanale" et autonome, pour répondre aux questions et aux réclamations des consommateurs. A défaut de mettre en place une stratégie de médias sociaux à l'échelle de l'entreprise et parce qu'elles ne se portent au devant du consommateur que service par service, les entreprises déçoivent le consommateur, ce qui décrédibilise leur marque et compromet la fidélité escomptée.

tags: alcatellucent customercare customerservice marketing socialmedia reputation brand

4. Intégrer : intégrer les conversations à
l'ensemble des fonctions marketing et de service client et autres points de
contact, tout en s'appuyant sur les compétences du reste de l'entreprise et sur
les investissements informatiques déjà engagés.

Dans une étude de 2010 effectuée par la Society of New Communications
Research, "72 % des personnes interrogées ont affirmé qu'elles utilisaient les
médias sociaux pour évaluer, avant d'effectuer tout achat, la réputation d'une
entreprise du point de vue de l'assistance à la clientèle, et 74 % qu'elles
s'adressaient prioritairement aux entreprises dont elles avaient observé en
ligne qu'elles étaient appréciées des internautes pour ce critère.

Email Usage Drops 28% in Past 12 Months! - Annotated

"A recent study by Nielsen that focused on how Americans spend their time online, unexpectedly found that email usage has dropped by 28% over the last year"

tags: email socialnetworks communicaion

Not surprisingly, the data show that social networking use increased by 43% over the same time period. A

The case AGAINST new Technology -- beware at IMTS! - Annotated

"This is true whether we are talking about new machines, a new ERP system or any other technology. Technology is necessary, but it is not always sufficient to help you make more money. Which is why we have a saying in Theory of Constraints — Technology is necessary but not sufficient. And of course Eliyahu M Goldratt also has a book by the title Necessary But Not Sufficient.

So read on and I will give you 4 questions to ask about any technology purchase your considering."

tags: technology ERP theoryofconstraints limitation

Technology can bring benefits, if and only if, it diminishes a limitation.

• This does NOT mean that if technology diminishes a limitation it necessarily brings benefits -- only that it can or may bring them.

• Even if the limitation is NOT recognized (you aren't aware of it), the statement holds true

1. What is the main power of the technology?

2. What limitation does this technology diminish?

3. What rules helped us to accommodate the limitation?

4. What rules should we use now (with this new technology)?

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Partagez cet article avec votre réseau:

Articles sur le même sujet

No related posts.

(Source: Bloc-Notes de Bertrand Duperrin)

[Post] A world in 140 characters ? Really ?

Bertrand Duperrin — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 14:00:09 GMT

Summary : Are we linving in a 140 characters world ? Not at all. 140 characters is only the signal that points at something bigger and without which no signal would exist.

Sometimes we need symbol to show how our world is changing, to what extent a tool is leaving its mark on an era even if this era is only a few months long. Today's trendy tool being Twitter, it's a commonly used reference to describe the world of instantaneousness, of spontaneity, of mobility we're living in. As a consequence we're asked to rethink our life, our work, how we communicate in order not to be outdated in a 140 characters world.

A word in 140 characters ? Why not. Time is speeding up, messages and thoughts are divided up. "Now" is more important than what lasts, reaction and context than content and capitalizing. When everything's fast, the only way to understand the future is to have one's two feet in the moving present, and information above 140 characters is useless since it will be outdated before having been used.

Sorry, but I don't buy it.

If we take some time to look at twitter and how people use it, if we try to understand what we really find valuable, it appears that we're facing :

- the expression in 140 characters of an information relying on a larger amount of previously acquired knowledge put into context.

- a summary of a larger content with a link to it.

When talking about information or knowledge, we must understand there's a difference between substance and signal. We've been struggling to indentifying and mobilizing the right substance because of a lack of signal for decades but, now we have efficient tools to deliver signals, we must not focus on it and forget the sunstance and the fact we still need to create and improve it.

We communicate, stimulate, react in 140 characters but to do so we still need to think in more than 140 characters.

Our world is not and won't be a 140 characters world and neither will enterprises. On the other hand these 140 characters will wake all our knowledge more easy to harness to decide, act and adapt faster. Forgetting that the signal needs something to feed it, something to point at may have detrimental consequences.
Share and Enjoy:

Tags: ambient awareness , information , microblogging , signal , twitter

Related posts

Real time web is not a cure-all (and twitter won't kill blogs) (2)

Hey ! I'm your ERP and I'm talking to you ! (0)

Social Media needs a better signal to noise ratio : discovering Microplaza (0)

From Social Media to Social CRM : a recent experience with airlines (12)

Did enterprise RSS die before having lived ? (0)

(Source: Bertrand Duperrin's Notepad)

[Post] Un monde en 140 caractères ? Vraiment ?

Bertrand Duperrin — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 07:00:03 GMT

Résumé : Vivons nous dans un monde en 140 caractères ? Pas du tout. 140 caractères c'est la taille d'un signal qui réfère à quelque chose de beaucoup plus grand sans lequel le signal n'existerait pas.

Il faut parfois des symboles pour montrer à quel point un monde se transforme, à quel point un outil marque son époque, ne serait-ce que pour quelques mois. La mode du moment s'appelant twitter, il est de plus en plus coutume d'y faire référence pour décrire le monde d'instantaneité, de spontanéité (?), de mobilité dans lequel nous vivons. Et voilà donc qu'on nous demande de repenser notre vie, notre travail, notre communication pour ne pas être dépassés dans "un monde en 140 caractères".

Un monde en 140 caractères...soit. Accélération du temps, morcellement du message, de la pensée. On fait primer l'instant sur la durée, la réaction et le contexte sur le fonds et la capitalisation. Quant tout va vite, être pleinement dans le présent permet de ne pas être surpris par l'avenir, rien ne sert de construire au delà de 140 caractères car cela sera déjà enterré, passé, dépassé avant même d'avoir servi.

Désolé, mais je n'achète pas l'idée une seule seconde.

Si l'on prend la peine de regarder un peu twitter et son fonctionnement, que l'on essaie de se pencher plus particulièrement sur ce à quoi on donne de la valeur (et varie donc selon les individus) il apparait rapidement que l'on a affaire à :

- la formulation en 140 caractères d'une information reposant sur la mise en contexte d'une masse de connaissance précédemment acquise beaucoup plus importante.

- un extrait d'un d'un texte beaucoup plus volumineux vers lequel pointe un lien.

En matière d'information ou de savoir il importe de distinguer la substance du signal. Le problème, pendant des années, est que faute de signal on a toujours peiné à identifier, localiser et in fine mobiliser la substance. Il ne faudrait pas à l'inverse, aujourd'hui, tout miser sur le signal au détriment de la constitution et de l'amélioration permanente de la substance.

On communique, on stimule, on questionne, on réagit en 140 caractères. Mais, pour cela, encore faut il être capable de penser en beaucoup plus de 140 caractères.

Notre monde n'est pas et ne sera pas en 140 caractères, pas plus que nos entreprises. Il saura, par contre, par ces 140 caractères rendre plus facilement accessible et mobilisable l'ensemble de son savoir pour décider, agir et s'adapter plus vite. Oublier que le signal n'a plus de valeur s'il n'a rien pour l'alimenter, rien vers quoi pointer serait, au contraire, très dommageable.
Partagez cet article avec votre réseau:

Articles sur le même sujet

Hello ! Je suis ton ERP et je te parle ! (6)

Twitter dans l'entreprise : question d'usages ou de culture ? (2)

Le web temps réel n'est pas une panacée (et twitter ne tuera pas les blogs) (13)

Le RSS en entreprise est il mort avant d'avoir vécu ? (2)

Idées sur le microblogging en entreprise (3)

(Source: Bloc-Notes de Bertrand Duperrin)

[Post] Fun at work or fun in work ?

Bertrand Duperrin — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 14:00:45 GMT

Résumé : albeit the funny side of social media is often used as an argument for adoption, we have to admit that even if organization prefer to have happy employees they ae not ready to pay to make them have fun at work. Either we consider that's regrettable form of schizophrenia or the consequence of a culture that dates from another century, facts are facts. So fun should only be the happy side effect of something else above all...be free. Used in the workplace, social media offer possibilities like nothing beforme : more than creating funny spaces and times in the workplace, they allow to make fun a part of people's work, making it at the same time a consequence, a lever,and a part of a continuous improvement logic that interest and reassure organizations.

Amongst the issues that inspire me contradictory feelings about enterprise 2.0, fun at work is not the least.

There's a belief shared by everybody in the workplace : employees who enjoy what they do are more efficient and it has a positive impact on work atmosphre. One of the best way to make it happen is, to some extent, to make work more fun. In the same way, everybody knows the value of a good atmosphere in the workplace. Note the difference between both : in one case we talk about the nature of work, in the other the context where it takes place : some people may hate they job but love their company, colleagues and the overall context (despite it never lasts for a long time).

A part of enterprise 2.0 value proposal is to bring fun, some even saying that in such a context the intranet looks like a big party were all employees gather. I fully suscribe to this point of view but, at the same time, I'm very uncomfortable with it

- because I experienced it (and still doing), I can tell it changes the way you interact with others, it improves relationships and, even if I consider my internal social network as a business too, I prefer to connect to it when I open my computing rather than openning my mailbox (in addition to the fact it's a more efficient tool too...).

- no organization would refuse to make their employees happier.

- there's a lot of organizations (even a majority ?) where the concept of fun at work is not seen as being compatible with work. It means that employees are wasting their time and would be more productive if they didn't have fun or that they are not busy enough. Anyway, in such organizations, most of employees don't want managers to think they're having fun (and managers don't want their superiors to think they're having fun too even if they'd like...all are human being and share the same DNA). Maybe it's a pity but the fact is things are more complicated that we would like them to be.

- most companies would be ready to invest to make their employees happy. None to make them have fun at work. I'm not saying that no one understands how it matters, but it's impossible to come with this argument alone in front of any executive to get fundings for such a project.

- to some extent, even if the "productivity" side of enterprise 2.0 is seducing, many organizations may fear its "funny side", only for self-esteem and image reasons. So that's an argument that has to be used very cautiously.

So...how to do ?

That's the difference between the "intranet big party" and making people experience new things while doing their work. Very few organizations will buy the intranet party (what does not mean it won't happen...), but fun can be embedded into work by :

- starting with an efficiency driven approach : working better and more efficiently. That's the visible part of the value proposal.

- the "fun effect", made possible by these new interactions is considered as an hally and lucky consequence, that comes with the rest, for the same price.

- this "fun effect" can also be shown as a lever that favors adoption of new tools and practices. An "ergonomic" argument of course.

At the end that's nothing else than a politically correct way of introducing something that seduces everybody provided they don't have to pay for and make it become a goal.

Then, I as mentioned here, visionaries will be able to go further and embed funny systems into business tools to encourage employees to do things they used to be reluctant to because of a lack of interest or the off-puting nature of the task. Or to make them aware of new things... That's an unexplored land on which everything has to be built from scratch and is an incredible opportunity for new innovative approaches and systems (HR...do you hear me ?)...for those who'll dare.

Anyone who want to explore this new land should like those posts :

Game Mechanics at work in the Enterprise 2.0?

Enterprise 2.0: Social Scorecards and Social Media Karma

Anyway, if serious games are seducing more and more organizations evey day, there's no reason why fun would be kept outside the intranet. Putting fun into work is the best way to make people more productive...and fun at work would be its logical sequel.
Share and Enjoy:

Tags: adoption , change , change-management , culture , fun , games , Human resources , intranet , serious games , social media

Related posts

Which future for middle managers ? (0)

Networking and collaboration : is enterprise a land of trust or distrust ? (0)

Is enterprise 2.0 possible without positive thinking ? (2)

Enterprise 2.0 adoption : you need both a voice and a screwdriver (5)

Social Medias : being there, doing as usual, doing new things (1)

(Source: Bertrand Duperrin's Notepad)

[Post] Du fun au travail ou du fun dans le travail ?

Bertrand Duperrin — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 07:00:25 GMT

Résumé : si le coté ludique et fun des médias sociaux est souvent mis en avant il faut reconnaitre que les entreprises, si elles désirent toutes avoir des salariés heureux, ne sont pas prêtes à payer dès lors qu'il leur semble comprendre qu'il s'agit de faire en sorte que les salariés s'amusent au travail. Qu'on considère qu'il s'agisse d'une forme de schizophrénie regrettable ou d'une culture d'un autre siècle le fait est là. Le "fun" ne saurait donc être l'argument majeur mais une conséquence heureuse d'un projet plus global et surtout...être gratuit. Les médias sociaux utilisés dans un contexte de travail offrent une possibilité que très peu de dispositifs ont pu proposer par le passé : plus que créer des espaces et des moments ludiques dans l'entreprise ils permettent de l'incorporer dans le travail quotidien, en faisant à la fois une conséquence et un levier mais en s'inscrivant dans une logique d'amélioration de la performance qui intéresse...et rassure.

Au nombre des sujets qui m'inspirent souvent des sentiments contradictoires dans le contexte entreprise 2.0, il y a celui du fun au travail. Je garde l'anglicisme "fun" faute de mieux, on ne parle pas de bonheur, ni de joie...peut être qu'amusement pourrait faire l'affaire...

Il est une certitude partagée par tous, employés, managers, observateurs : des employés qui prennent du plaisir à ce qu'ils font sont des employés plus efficaces...et cela se ressent de plus sur l'ambiance de travail. Et une des manières pour arriver à cela est, d'une certaine mesure, de rendre le travail amusant, distrayant. Pareillement, une bonne ambiance dans l'entreprise est également quelque chose de valorisé intuitivement. Notez bien toutefois la différence entre les deux : dans un cas c'est la nature même du travail et la manière dont on le fait qui est en cause, dans le second c'est plus une ambiance globale : on peut avoir un travail que l'on déteste mais apprécier le contexte dans lequel on le fait (quoique cela ne dure jamais éternellement).

Une des propositions de valeur de l'entreprise 2.0 est justement ce fameux "fun", certains allant jusqu'à dire que dans un tel système, l'intranet ressemble à une véritable fête qui réunit tous les salariés. En même temps que je souscris totalement à ce principe, j'ai beaucoup de mal avec.

- Pour l'avoir vécu et le vivre, oui cela implique une relation différente des autres et même s'il s'agit d'un outil de travail je préfère me connecter le matin à mon réseau social et ses espaces de travail que lancer mon client mail. Ca reste de la communication mais qualitativement cela n'a rien à voir (en plus du fait que ce soit plus efficace également).

- Aucune entreprise ne refusera le fait de rendre ses salariés heureux.

- Il y a un nombre important (et je pense majoritaire) d'entreprises où la notion même de plaisir ou d'amusement ne peut se conjuguer avec le travail. Cela signifie qu'on perd du temps et qu'on serait plus productif sans s'amuser ou qu'on a pas assez de travail. Et où de toute manière ça n'est pas l'image que les collaborateurs veulent renvoyer à leur management (il ne faut pas croire que le manager est toujours le tue la joie, il partage souvent une grande partie du patrimoine génétique de ses subalternes). On peut trouver cela dommage ou stupide, se dire que ça va changer, la question est qu'aujourd'hui c'est compliqué.

- La plupart des entreprises sont prêtes, si elles en ont les moyens, à investir pour rendre le collaborateur heureux. Aucune pour qu'ils s'amusent au travail. Je ne dis pas qu'il n'y a pas des gens qui comprennent, mais si on arrive avec ce seul argument devant un comité de direction il y a peu de chances pour que budget passe...

- A la limite même si coté "efficacité" du projet entreprise 2.0 peut séduire, certaines peuvent tout de même se braquer sur le coté ludique...pour une simple question d'image ou d'estime de soi. Il s'agit donc d'un élément positif à manier avec une certaine précaution.

Alors comment faire ?

C'est toute la différence entre "la grande fête sur l'intranet" et permettre des expériences nouvelles dans le cadre des tâches quotidiennes. La fête sur l'intranet ne passera pas (ce qui ne veut pas dire qu'elle ne peut pas se passer...tout est question de gouvernance) par contre on peut inclure cette dimension "fun" dans le travail en :

- commençant par une approche très orientée "efficacité" : travailler mieux et plus efficacement est la priorité. Et c'est la partie visible, principale, de la proposition de valeur

- le coté "fun" permis par les nouvelles intéractions est considéré comme une agréable conséquence, qui vient avec le reste sans augmentation du prix.

- en plus d'un plaisir nouveau dans les intéractions, on peut également vendre que le coté "fun" des outils favorise leur adoption et donc celles des pratiques qu'ils supportent. Argument purement "ergonomique" bien sur.

Finalement ni plus ni moins qu'une manière politiquement correct de présenter une chose qui séduit tout le monde jusqu'au jour où il s'agit de sortir le carnet de chèques ou en faire l'objectif d'un projet.

Ensuite, comme je le disais ici, les plus visionnaires pourront aller plus loin en intégrant dans les outils de vrais dispositifs ludiques qui serviront de stimulus pour inciter les salariés à faire telle ou telle chose qu'ils négligeaient auparavant par manque d'intérêt ou en raison du caractère rébarbatif de la tâche. Ou parce qu'il s'agit d'une chose nouvelle à laquelle il faut les sensibiliser. Un terrain vierge sur lequel tout est à construire et qui peut, à mon avis, permettre de créer des dispositifs (notamment RH) spécialement riches et novateurs pour qui osera défricher le terrain. En attendant vous pouvez allez vous inspirer de ces deux excellents articles :

Game Mechanics at work in the Enterprise 2.0?

Enterprise 2.0: Social Scorecards and Social Media Karma

Après tout si les serious games séduisent il n'y a pas de raison de ne pas arriver là. Et mettre le fun dans le travail plutôt qu'au travail est peut être le meilleur moyen de le rendre productif...de toute manière il finira pas entrainer l'autre.
Partagez cet article avec votre réseau:

Articles sur le même sujet

Quel avenir pour le middle management dans l'entreprise de demain ? (9)

Networking et collaboration : L'entreprise terre de confiance ou de méfiance ? (3)

L'entreprise 2.0 est elle possible sans pensée positive ? (0)

Développer de nouvelles pratiques dans tous les contextes (2)

Adoption de l'entreprise 2.0 : il vous faut à la fois une voix et un tournevis (1)

(Source: Bloc-Notes de Bertrand Duperrin)

[Post] Picture of the week #6 : Every problem has a solution...

Bertrand Duperrin — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 14:00:49 GMT

Every problem has a solution, or else, you're part of the problem

Albert Einstein

Illustration from the book "The Golden Rules for Success".

Thanks to Thierry d'Auzers for this excellent book, the rights of use and Dimitri Tolstoï for the pictures.

Offer yourself The Golden rules for Success.

Browse the previously published pictures of the week.

Get the iPhone or Ipad App.
Share and Enjoy:

Tags: problem solving , problems

Related posts

Your knowledge helps you more than your productivity (3)

When tools are on the cloud, companies have to make money rain (1)

What if the future of organizations was SOO (or SPO) ? (1)

Toyota : a good example of SOO that reduces business risk (0)

The day when employees will find answers instead of waiting for them to come (0)

(Source: Bertrand Duperrin's Notepad)