The Xpragmatic View

Collaboration as it is - Working together, alone - Part 1

marc.buyens@xpragma.com — Sat, 4 Feb 2012 12:12:27 +0100

The collaboration thing

This is the first of a short series of posts in which we will explore the inner workings of the thing called "collaboration".

Over the past months, we have been writing and thinking frequently about collaboration: what it is, what it means, how it can be used, how it can be improved. Most of this was done in the context of discussions on Enterprise 2.0 and Social Business, where more and better connectedness is often preached as being the Holy Grail for more and better collaboration.

That is true to some extent. However, it does not tell the complete story. Therefore, in some of our posts, we have been arguing against such thinking. However, after a while, we had to discover that also our own ideas were not always as accurate or as complete as we initially thought.

So, this paper is a thinking exercise about what collaboration really is. The purpose is not to get the ultimate proof for our own ideas, but simply to get to a better understanding, a deeper insight and hopefully, a more correct view on how this might create more meaning in our life. As always, we welcome your comments and ideas.

What is collaboration?

As some have mentioned in the comments on our blog, collaboration has many facets and consequently, the inner workings of collaboration are not always the same.

That is true. When thinking about how people work together when facing a disaster, it is clear that this has little to do with the way we work together in the context of a business project.

So, the scope of this paper is limited to collaboration in a "regular" business context, be it within a single company or between companies and therefore, the starting point for the discussion is this Wikipedia definition:

Collaboration is working together to achieve a goal. It is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together to realize shared goals, (this is more than the intersection of common goals seen in co-operative ventures, but a deep, collective, determination to reach an identical objective)

This definition is OK, but as we will see, it is really insufficient to clearly understand the reasons why collaboration sometimes will work and why it so often won’t work at all.

The "system" collaboration

To get to this deeper understanding, we must look at the larger picture, at the "context" of the collaboration, at the "system" that drives the interactions and therefore, the success or the failure of collaboration.

We’ll do so by looking at how and why two companies work together. For the reasons that will become obvious later on, this is a more simple and straightforward model that we then can extend to understand why individuals work together (or not).

As always, the basic premise is a company looking for a solution to a problem. In this case, Company A that has its corporate goals and ambitions and that has identified an intermediate objective or deliverable that will help it on its path towards success.

If Company A can get itself to this intermediate objective or deliverable in an efficient and effective way, there is no need for collaboration. Of course, reality is different and often, a company has to reach outside to complement its own capabilities.

So this brings us to the next picture where we see our Company A working together with Company B, in some way, in order to jointly get to this intermediate objective or deliverable.

As the graph suggests, only the intermediate objective or deliverable is shared. There is no need that the corporate goals of both companies are identical. In theory, they can be completely different and even competing.

However, both companies view the intermediate objective as something that adds value, something that will help them on their path to success, be it perhaps for different reasons.

The dirty secret of collaboration

OK, most likely, this will seem rather obvious.

However, is it?

For most of us, collaboration is seen as a very positive act. "Working together to achieve a common goal". Could it be nicer?

However, reality is that in most collaboration acts "nice" only is a "nice to have" characteristic. For collaboration to work, it isn’t really necessary that all parties involved really like each other. In most cases, they don’t. Just have a look at how you work together with your colleagues. Do you really like all of them?

If collaboration would require that the parties involved really "like" each other, little productive would happen in this world. But fortunately, collaboration is a rather selfish act that you participate in because it will bring you closer to your GOAL, your own chosen selfish GOAL. And that behaviour is also called "economy".

To be continued.

About the author

Marc Buyens is analyst, management consultant and owner of Xpragma.
Marc started Xpragma in 1999 after a 20+ years career in the IT sector. Today, he provides advice, training and mentoring services focusing on the intersection of technological evolution, organisational change and business strategy: a messy world of unfulfilled promises.

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Deciding together, alone

marc.buyens@xpragma.com — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 16:53:50 +0100

The past couple of weeks have been rather hectic. Very busy, which is of course good, but a busyness that also had its drawbacks. We have been dealing with a couple of projects that had the label "problem" stamped all over them.

Critical projects with strict deadlines that required the involvement of several individuals, all with their own specialism, but whereby nobody had any experience or background with the complete "context" of the challenge we were dealing with.

It should have been a prime example of collaboration but, as we experienced, it was the fast lane to disaster.

Even the greatest specialist freezes when asked for a commitment for something that slightly reaches outside his/her expertise domain.

The net result is a standstill, lengthy discussions about details and conclusions that nobody agrees with.

It seems to be a "feature" of our race.

Accidentally, or not, we then read this post by Andrew McAfee on the HBR blog: 'The Surprising Benefits of Solitude'.

An interesting post indeed and somewhere, the reassuring feeling that our past experience is not really an exception but rather the standard rule.

Unfortunately.

We are quite sure that there must have been times where simple gestures were sufficient for the group to clearly understand the upcoming danger or challenge at hand and get to action. Otherwise, they wouldn't have survived as a group and, most likely, our race wouldn't exist anymore.

But somewhere along the path of our evolution, we seem to have lost that basic skill of simple, fast decision-making.

So, now we need consultants to guide our decisions and get the blame when things don't work out as planned.

The comforting feeling of being liked.

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Collaboration is not a remedy, it is an outcome

marc.buyens@xpragma.com — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 12:13:18 +0100

A couple of days ago, Dan Samper of bCommunities sent us a Twitter message telling us that we should have a look at Future of Collaborative Enterprise, a recently started initiative by Frédéric Gilbert and Thierry de Baillon.

We don't know Frédéric Gilbert, but we follow Thierry de Baillon on Twitter, we read his blog and we value very much his thinking and analysis. But here, we are sorry to say, we think that he is wrong.

The Future of the Collaborative Enterprise. The expression suggests that collaboration is some kind of objective, a purpose, a remedy to a problem, since more collaboration will cure the many flaws of today's enterprises.

This thinking is at least partially incorrect. Collaboration is rather an outcome. It is the resulting behaviour in contexts that invite for collaboration. Sometimes, this behaviour is facilitated by certain tools, such as e-mail or Enterprise Social Platforms. However, these tools are not the determining factor. The context is.

What is collaboration?

According to Wikipedia, collaboration is working together to achieve a goal. That's fair. We agree. However, the following part of the definition is a bit more stretched:

It is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together to realize shared goals, [...] a deep, collective, determination to reach an identical objective.

We don't buy that. Here, we mix up goals and deliverables or matching interests and haves and wants. In most cases, there isn't a common goal. There just is a shared benefit, hence shared interest for working together.

As an example, let us have a look at crowdsourcing, one of the domains where the Enterprise 2.0 promise has really delivered results.

On one side, there is the company, looking for a solution to a problem. On the other side, the expert, having the solution to the problem. The link between? Financial reward. For the expert, getting paid for his knowledge. For the company, freeing the way to a lucrative product roll-out or some other advantage.

Or let us have a look at two employees working together in the same project. Do they have a common goal? Yes, to some extent, the success of the project is such common goal. But is this really what drives them?

Again, in most situations, the project success is not the main driver, but the direct or indirect effect on the career position is. If there was no potential impact on the career, the project might as well go to hell.

The idea of the common goal is something we often take for granted. Why would you work together otherwise? And we also, we make the same mistake. In our 'About collaboration and dog crates' post, we gave the following definition of collaboration:

Collaboration is about engaging in undefined interactions to achieve a common goal in a way that makes that all participants have to leave their comfort zone.

Again the expression "common goal". It seems such a natural thing in the context of collaboration. However, in most cases, especially within the enterprise context, it is not what drives the outcome. The shared benefit is.

Connectedness is not the main problem

Now, this might seem like a bit of hair-splitting, of playing with words and subtle differences in meaning. However, these subtle differences determine to what extent a certain approach can really work.

In the E2.0 discourse, improving the connectedness is often seen as a major step towards more collaboration. It will allow you to find the right expert, the solution to your problem, the serendipity effect, etc. Better connectedness allows for more and better collaboration, which improves enterprise performance.

Well, that is true to some extent. In the crowdsourcing world, improving the connectedness is certainly important since it will increase the number of experts who potentially will be able to solve your problem.

And more in general, in a business-to-business context, better connectedness is indeed a requirement for allowing more initiatives that create a "shared benefit". As we wrote in previous posts, that's the basic reason that we see a bright future for E2.0 in a B2B context.

However, within the enterprise, things are a bit different. Where is the real interest for better collaboration? In many cases, there is none. So, why care? And more and better tools for better connectedness will not change this.

Whatever the available tools, if the right context is in place, collaboration will happen, notwithstanding the challenges that result from the crappy tools we have to use. It will happen.

However, if such right context is not in place, whatever great communication tools we will implement, they will only be used to the greater glory of the vendor, but they will add nothing to the bottom-line.

The collaborative enterprise. It seems a reasonable thing and something we all want. However, in reality, it is an oxymoron. It cannot exist. Apart from a few exceptions, what drives enterprises to invest in collaborative tools has nothing to do with a willingness for creating a context that facilitates getting a "shared benefit", but merely with an intent for maximising profit at marginal cost.

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The delicate balancing act of collaboration

marc.buyens@xpragma.com — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 12:25:47 +0100

Since a couple of days, we are working on assignments for two different companies, both in the same industry. They are facing a similar challenge and we are assisting them addressing this challenge.

The size and contexts of these companies are slightly different. The larger company is more than twice the size of the smaller one and, for various reasons, also "better organised". This translates into the size of the core teams we have to deal with. For the larger company, it is a core team of four members. For the smaller company, it is a single person.

For both companies, the challenge is largely unknown territory, so the built-up of new knowledge and understanding is a critical requirement for both teams. Which team gets the better result?

Difficult to say. The larger team certainly has the opportunity for much more "confrontation of ideas", which should result in a better understanding, hence better decisions. However, the larger team also has the handicap of having to reach consensus. Consequently, their decision path is longer.

Who gets the better deal?

From a brutal ROI point of view, the individual always wins. However, there are situations where a marginally better result of the team can translate into a major advantage for the company and then, the larger team most likely will be in the better position.

There is no golden rule in this. It is a delicate balancing act. Confrontation of ideas, bringing together individuals with different cultures and experiences... it all adds to the potential value of the outcome. However, we must not forget the investment. Whatever we might think, in most situations, using larger teams does not result in an exponential improvement of the outcome, but merely a marginal one.

All too often, companies create "war teams" that have little or nothing to tell to each other, carrying overlapping experiences and knowledge and all lacking whatever understanding of the real problem. The logical outcomes are political games and little added value. Better networking will not change this.

Social networking, enterprise 2.0, social business... they all carry the promise of greater achievement, but it will not happen within any context. When applied without serious forethought, it will in most cases only result in waste and noise.

Always be sure that you really need more than the individual.

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What makes the team tick?

marc.buyens@xpragma.com — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 14:47:19 +0100

Network dynamics

This week, we came across this short post by Harold Jarche, 'Engaging the trustworthy'. It's one of the many reflections on the dynamics of networks and the role and the importance of the so-called network archetypes Salespersons, Connectors and Mavens, as they were introduced by Malcolm Gladwell in his bestseller 'The Tipping Point'.

Salespersons, Connectors and Mavens, it's an interesting classification and not without merit. But also, it is just another classification. Already long before we were talking about our 'networked society', various types of personality classifications were used in organisations.

We ourselves participated in several personality checks, all aiming at revealing the inner soul of what drives an individual and consequently, how we should take this into account to boost team performance.

We have to admit, for the majority of these classification exercises, the results were surprisingly correct, both for what was said about us as for what was said about our colleagues. Revealing the inner soul of the individual and his/her special defects didn't seem too much of a problem.

However, did the performance of our team get a major boost afterwards?

Well, we assume that you can guess the answer.

Knowing how the pieces look like does not give you a clue about how these pieces will work together in a given situation. It's just an equation with too many variables.

The same goes for our observations about the Salespersons, Connectors and Mavens. The network dynamics we observe are real. However, they are real for a specific network context. In this case, a network context that is largely free form.

Is an organisation, is a company a network? Well, to some extent, yes. However, is it a free form network?

Of course not. If there is anything in our society that is not free from, then it is a company. There are always rules and roles and costs and bottom lines that create hurdles for 'normal' network dynamics.

So, whatever we observe as being the core dynamics of interaction in social networks, little of that has any value behind the company walls.

Making the team tick

Two weeks ago, we started a new assignment for a telecommunications company. They have to deal with a new project that they are not really familiar with. Neither do we.

They have a fully-fledged project team in place, program manager, steering committee, backing from the top management. These guys are really professional. Salespersons, Connectors and Mavens all over the place.

But apparently, they like having someone who ties it all together. Someone who hasn't any specific knowledge or authority about whatever aspect of the project, but who just will help them creating the final deliverable, based upon their work.

We've done it before. For some reason, we frequently get into this type of assignment. It's something we seem to be good at.

Sometimes, when people ask us, we tell them that we specialise in things that we don't know anything about.

It makes them laugh. Nobody is asking for such skill.

But they are wrong. In these times of frantic change, it is a very needed skill.

In Jarche's post, he is talking about 'engaging the trustworthy'. Trust is indeed an important element in network dynamics. However, we don't think it is the most important one.

We didn't get this assignment because we are the “most trustworthy” one. We might not completely look like a crook, but in general, consultants are rarely seen as “trustworthy”.

No, what's at play here is a bit more complex. We are no specialists in these matters but, personally, we think that it is a matter of confidence. Confidence to get it done.

For sure, we do have it. We like these assignments where we have to deliver results in completely novel territory and until now, we always managed to bring it home.

So perhaps that some of this confidence also flows to the team. They know all too well that the assignment is far more unknown territory for us than it is for them. So if we can manage, hell, why wouldn't they?

People are weird things, especially in teams.

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The dawn of the real Enterprise 2.0

marc.buyens@xpragma.com — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 11:00:52 +0200

December 2010, we wrote our post 'The future of work - Enterprise 2.0, get real!'. In the post, we argued that the current E2.0 initiatives were essentially focusing on solving the problems of large organisations, whereas the real challenge for our future economy was the support for interactions within large ecosystems of small companies.

The post got quite a bit of reactions, but someone raised the question whether there was any research that supported our vision.

Valid question of course and as we wrote in the comments, at that moment we weren't really aware of any specific research on this. There was some research that indirectly supported some of the claims and there was of course, the well-known example of the Li & Fung company, but apart from that...

However, last week October 6, The Lisbon Council published a new policy brief that really focuses on this subject (although not in the context of E2.0): 'The Rise of the Micro-Multinational: How Freelancers and Technology-Savvy Start-Ups are Driving Growth, Jobs and Innovation'. The Lisbon Council is a think tank for economic competitiveness and social renewal, founded in 2003 and incorporated in Belgium as an independent, non-profit association.

As said, the paper does not specifically talk about the required technology or E2.0, but it will be easy to draw your own conclusions. Some quotes as a teaser:

The difference over time is a revolution in the way economic value is created.

From their first day on the job, micromultinationals can access international markets – once the exclusive domain of corporate giants.

Entrepreneurs, freelancers and the self-employed are in a position unlike ever before to become the engine of jobs, growth, innovation and future prosperity.

The need for more 'integrated disconnectedness' just got a bit more real.

Enjoy!

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The case for integrated disconnectedness

marc.buyens@xpragma.com — Sat, 8 Oct 2011 12:21:10 +0200

In this View, we continue the discussion on the theme of 'integration'. As you will remember, in our last post, 'Talking about a world without faces', we described how Laurie Buczek came to the conclusion that the lack of success of Enterprise 2.0 was due to ... a lack of integration of social tools into the collaborative workflow.

As we said, a valid point. More integration will certainly facilitate adoption and in general, deliver more tangible business benefits. However, will it create something that is worth the label "2.0"?

Integration for connectedness

In some of our previous posts, we have frequently discussed some of the reasons that make that Enterprise 2.0 has not become the breakthrough success that many were hoping for. There are numerous reasons for this, but the main theme always boils down to the unavoidable reality that with E2.0, we try deriving similar advantages of discovery, creativity, innovation, change and other serendipities previously observed in the Web 2.0 world, by making use of similar tools. However, in the enterprise, we have to do this "within context".

In the enterprise, everything we do has always to be "within context", some context. There are always boundaries and rules that are imposed on us and that will inhibit the full exploitation of the potential benefits of the social tools we use.

Unfortunately, the very nature of emergence makes that, very often, the really interesting ideas or solutions that pop up will be found to be "out of context", not in line with the present corporate way of working. And as many E2.0 practitioners certainly have experienced, convincing management to adjust the context so that it will fit the new idea is rarely the fast lane to promotion.

More integration, as suggested by Buczek, will not dramatically change this. By necessity, enterprise integration always has to be 'within context'. So, integrating social tools into the collaborative workflow essentially implies giving up many of the potentially interesting, yet too exotic parts of the emergence, becoming connected, more aligned, and finally, a part of the business processes. Business as usual.

This still will allow for improvement and in certain business contexts, for substantial improvement, but it will not be transformational.

Whatever we might wish or hope for, the simple reality is that today's enterprises are no ecosystems of so-called 'free agents' that jointly create the "emerging enterprise". There are fundamental laws at play, right or wrong, that define what the enterprise really is or can be and 'social' still has little or no voice in making these laws.

Therefore, taking all of this into account, it has always surprised us how little attention has been given by the E2.0 crowd to the specific business contexts where many of these obstacles and challenges do not play or even work in favour of E2.0 adoption: business-to-business contexts.

Integration for disconnectedness

Of course, with crowdsourcing, B2B has always been somewhat part of the E2.0 discourse. However, crowdsourcing is a rather specific and narrow application domain that will not be really relevant for most businesses. However, there are many more B2B contexts where improved collaboration would greatly benefit the business outcome.

In an E2.0 context, B2B has the clear advantage that the participating companies can, to a large extent, really act as free agents and therefore, fully benefit from the opportunities that emerge from the use of the collaboration tools. There will of course always be some form of (stronger or weaker) dependency upon each other. But apart from these dependencies, each company more or less draws its own course.

In addition, in such context, integration is not the workaround to get to E2.0 adoption. Here, E2.0 collaboration tools really can provide THE integration.

In a B2B world, integration is a major issue. You find all varieties of business networks, often including very small companies, all with their own (often very limited) IT infrastructure. Real IT integration rarely is an option and telephone calls, e-mail and fax often are the only available "integration layer".

But even very large corporations with extensive IT infrastructures face similar challenges. Often, they have to deal with huge networks of much smaller suppliers, dealers and resellers, all with their own, of course, incompatible application environments. Web portals are then the traditional approach, but these are often limited to content distribution with limited capabilities for real interaction.

So, what the B2B world really needs are cloud-based collaborative solutions that support interactions that span multiple companies. The need is there, real alternatives are hardly available, the technology is largely there and the market acceptance for cloud-based solutions is increasing.

And things are starting to take off. During its recent Dreamforce conference, Salesforce.com, a well-known pioneer in cloud-based CRM solutions, announced extensions to its Chatter microblogging tool that will allow other networks, customers and partners to participate in so-called Chatter Customer Groups. Salesforce.com customers will be able to invite external parties to participate and collaborate within their own Chatter network. In addition, with the new Chatter Connect API, integration of Chatter into other application environments becomes possible.

It's an interesting sign of evolution and Saalesforce.com is of course a big name, but microblogging integration is only a very small (and also rather easy) part of the collaboration game. Still, there is likely more to come.

One new start-up that we are aware of that has taken on the challenge of addressing the broader context of B2B interoperability is bEcosystems, Inc. with its bCommunities product offering. Not accidentally, bEcosystems has its roots in the delivery of custom-tailored services to other businesses.

The product currently is in (invitation) beta. In its current form, the product is focused on project collaboration whereby individuals of different companies can work together in a secure environment, exchanging information, defining tasks, allocating resources, sending messages, etc. The environment provides for a single repository where the progress of all work can be monitored and where all related discussion threads are available. Furthermore, there is a series of industry- and service-specific process templates that facilitate project definition and follow-up for specific business contexts.

In this start-up phase, the market focus is likely on existing business relationships whereby already existing business partnerships will use it to move to a more reliable and more convenient way of interaction compared to the current 'loosely coupled' phone-email-fax interoperability.

However, the potential goes much further. As said, also in very large organisations, this type of solution can address real business needs. In addition, once such network of connected businesses becomes operational, we get an ecosystem that allows for even far greater potential.

As an example, in the E2.0 marketing, improving the ability for 'finding the right expert for the deal at hand' is a classical 'proof' for the ROI of the solution. It will add to the bottom-line.

Yes, correct!

But what about finding the right partner?

Today, most organisations are largely frozen into their existing business relationships because of the huge cost for finding reliable, cost effective and qualitative alternatives, the associated 'switching' costs and the risks involved.

But what if future generations of bCommunities style solutions provide for an environment to do just that in an economic and risk-free way?

Now, we are working in the management consulting business and all industries will be different, but our assessment is that if companies would really be able to exploit the potential of our networked economy, that they would be able to get an outcome that is twice as good at half the price. For those who are not that good at figures, that is a four times better return on investment.

That's the kind of opportunity we are talking about.

As we wrote in previous posts, Enterprise 2.0 has a great future, but we really have to start looking in the right places.

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Talking about a world without faces

marc.buyens@xpragma.com — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 17:43:46 +0200

Last week, this blog post by Laurie Buczek got quite a bit of attention: 'The Big Failure of Enterprise 2.0 Social Business', resulting in follow-up posts by industry experts such as Dion Hinchcliffe 'Putting Social Business To Work' and Sameer Patel 'Seriously, Don't Read My Blog' and a lot of comments and retweets.

Apparently, the article expressed what many were also feeling, thinking or experiencing: even after years of Enterprise 2.0 or social business deployment, the real breakthrough wasn't yet there. A lot of people were using the new tools and there were various successes, but it still wasn't mainstream. As Buczek wrote: We didn't cross the chasm - even after almost three years post deployment. Social collaboration is still voluntary and optional.

According to Buczek, the main reason for this lack of success is ... a lack of integration of social tools into the collaborative workflow.

Valid point. Indeed, integration is a major issue. All too often, social tools remain islands within a sea of other, more or less 'collaborative' tools such as e-mail, office tools, intranets, etc. So, it comes as no surprise that E2.0 vendors such as Jive, with its OffiSync acquisition, are trying to remedy this lack of integration.

However, will this enable the real breakthrough?

The real issue we see in discussions like this is that, although everyone will say that social business is not an IT-thing, we continue talking about it in terms of the traditional IT-speak. It's an integration issue, collaborative workflow, business processes, application silos...

These are all important concepts. However, it is talking about a world without faces. The real issue of social business is that it is a people's thing, something that has to deal with very unique individuals. But we continue thinking and talking in terms of averages.

Let's not forget the roots. The Enterprise 2.0 idea emerged after seeing the enormous success of Web 2.0, when people such as Andrew McAfee wondered what wonderful things might become possible in the enterprise when the same type of tools were deployed there.

It was an interesting idea. However, as we already wrote two years ago in 'Enterprise 2.0 - Enter the dark force':

People want to participate [on Web 2.0 platforms] because it fulfils some of their desires. This can be a desire for contact, self-expression, self-promotion, recognition, escaping the daily rut, whatever. However, always because they want to, because this participation delivers a direct, personal benefit.

And of course, some will not participate, because they do not see any value. It's their choice.

OK, already in those days, not everyone was convinced and people such as Michael Idinopulos of OpenText replied on Twitter that I disagree w/@mbuyens that personal gain drives E2.0 adoption. It's community, habit and effectiveness.

He was right of course. In an E2.0 context, adoption will be function of the way these tools facilitate the day-to-day tasks of the employees and more integration can certainly improve that.

However, that is also where it ends. That is what Buczek is feeling of what you can get after almost three years of efforts. Social collaboration is still voluntary and optional.

And that is absolutely normal. Social tools are no wonder tools that will get everyone excited. Same as for other tools such as e-mail, you will have some individuals who use them in an intelligent way, you will have many others who will abuse them and yet another group who will hardly use them at all. It's a tool, after all.

So, for anything that goes further than that, that is more transformational, more engaged, more all-encompassing, you fall back into the reality of what makes the success of Web 2.0: people who participate because they WANT to.

If we want to talk about a chasm that somewhere blocks unlimited adoption, then that chasm is the real, immense difference between the personal, individual world of Web 2.0, where you participate (or not) according to your own needs, wishes and wants, versus the enterprise world where everyone is expected to participate but where the reasons for doing so are not your own.

Perhaps the most important phrase in Buczek's post highlights this unavoidable chasm: Bottom line, we've had a social community internally (for a while) and it doesn't feel natural.

It doesn't feel natural.

We can all dream of the perfect workforce, but reality is that we have to settle for what we have: a bunch of humans, all with their own intellectual and emotional capabilities and limitations. Some of them really engaged and most likely, also some of them rather disconnected. All with their own dreams. Enter social business.

For various reasons, we have to commute a lot by train. So, we are sitting there amongst a bunch of employees from various companies, all chitchatting about their daily life and job.

Well, these aren't always pleasant stories. However, they are real stories. So, sometimes we wonder, if these would be the employees we have to deal with, would we manage? Would we succeed making it a social business?

We don't know. At least, it doesn't seem obvious at all. So, for all Enterprise 2.0 and social business evangelists, we strongly recommend taking the train now and then, listening to the conversations and then asking yourself that question 'Can we manage?'

It is a sobering experience.

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Designing for failing gracefully

marc.buyens@xpragma.com — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 15:24:09 +0200

Last week, we read this excellent post by Sameer Patel: 'Why Exception Handling Should be the Rule'. In the post, Patel argues that a fair amount of our work has to do with tasks that are not exactly predictable or predefined: a difficult question of a customer or prospect, an unexpected problem, etc. In such situations, human judgement is required, but employees all too often have to operate within a tight framework of rules and metrics, largely restricting their ability to take appropriate action.

As an example, Patel mentions a Delta Airlines case, previously cited by Adrian C. Ott at Harvard Business Review, where American soldiers returning from Afghanistan had to pay an extra $200 each to get a fourth bag on the plane. One of the soldiers recorded the event and posted it on Youtube and social media did the rest.

According to Ott, companies can avoid such situations ... by building guidelines and values - not absolute rules and measures. 'Doing what's right for the customer' is a value that can drive appropriate action.

Patel doesn't really disagree on this, but he argues that the answer won't come from values alone since such approach is often too complex to implement in today's enterprises. A more realistic approach might be built upon social technologies that can provide for fast, simple and cost-effective ways to improve communications and to get access to the necessary expertise and data needed to correctly address the exception.

Personally, we think that both approaches have their merit and that organisations should take them into account while developing customer-focused strategies.

However, it is an illusion to think that by doing so, we will always be able to address any exception in the best possible way. After all, we are only humans. So, sometimes, we will fail. It's the Murphy thing. And we will fail miserably and at the worst possible moment.

In the Delta case, could it have been avoided by guidelines and values or by better communication and social technology? We don't think so. If we understand the case correctly, this wasn't really an exception that suddenly popped up. It had been discussed before. Apparently, there had been an agreement on a (different) deal. The three bags limit seemed to be the set limit at all airlines. So, some people already gave this some thought before. The 'experts' already had been involved. The decisions were clear and correct, it seemed. But failure it was.

So, taking such realities into account, what is the single most important question that we must ask to avoid this?

Well, the answer is very simple: how do we design our business and our interactions with our customer base, so that the unavoidable failure that will pop up one day will not result in a disaster?

In the Delta case, the real problem is not the fourth bag exception and the way it was handled. The real problem is that people are fed up with the poor quality of most airlines, their lack of service and their manifest absence of customer focus. The exception is just a symptom of a far greater disease.

However, if you are really customer focused, if you really engage with your customers, you will survive the failure. Because you will fail together. Also customers know that a failure cannot always be avoided and they also know that after such 'exception' you will do even better to avoid it in the future.

Failing together, gracefully, in a human way. Solid ground for a real relationship.

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The Holy Grail of Knowledge Management: capturing meaning

marc.buyens@xpragma.com — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 18:31:18 +0200

Yesterday, we read this excellent post by Rolf Idar Isaksen (@roii) 'To make the knowledge worker productive'.

For those who know us a bit, we likely have the reputation of being an Enterprise 2.0 contrarian. Granted, we are. Therefore, it was a bit of a surprise for us that we really liked what we were reading. It really made sense. So, something had to be wrong with it. What was it?

In reality, there wasn't anything wrong with this post. Isaksen's vision of having a task-at-hand's container that gives you immediate and transparent access to all information that is related to the current work you are doing is spot on! Having some kind of browser-interface that gives you access to all the relevant information that is stored in Outlook, ERP, SCM or CRM applications, Word-documents, Excel sheets, etc. instead up hopping between a multitude of applications would be a major improvement. And we assume that some vendors are already making progress enabling this.

On the other hand, it also only is what it says: a container that gives you immediate access to all information that is related to your current task-at-hand. It's an IT-view on our business world where everything has to be expressed in bits that we store and retrieve. And these bits contain the information that will guide our decisions.

The problem is that this works well for a limited number of things. If your ERP-system tells you that the quantity ordered is 'x', well, very likely, there is little reason to argue against. These are facts. However, when someone describes a problem and someone else comes up with a solution, the bits that will be stored about this exchange will only contain a very minor part of the real meaning of this interaction.

By definition, language is a poor representation of our thinking and it gets only worse when we write it down. Whatever we had in our mind while writing this post, you will only capture a fraction of it and hopefully, not the wrong fraction.

Especially we, people with an IT-background live too much with this illusion that if we can capture our reality in bits, that we can own it, re-use it, replicate it. Unfortunately, what we are capturing is only a very poor representation of a far deeper and far more complex reality where the real meaning is often only visible in a smile or an uneasy gesture.

If we really want to succeed, we must improve our ability to capture meaning instead of bits.

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