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New Management Briefing

Today, a growing number of companies are deploying various Enterprise 2.0 initiatives and more are planning for. The market for E2.0 software is growing. Social computing functionality such as wikis, blogs, microblogs, profiles, tags are becoming common practice...

While there is clear evidence of the potential business value Enterprise 2.0 can bring, an uneasy feeling remains. Often, the results are below expectations, or the adoption is slow or it is difficult to keep the momentum after the initial start. People get frustrated because there does not seem to be a real reason for these issues. It was such a success in the Web 2.0 space, why is it so difficult here?

Gradually, the thinking has evolved. "It's about the people, stupid! Delivering value 'in the flow'. The culture thing. We have to align E2.0 and process." And today, we are ending up with this quote of Deb Lavoy, Director Product Marketing at Open Text

"The 'real' Enterprise 2.0 is not a technology or marketing plan, but the reinvention of the enterprise itself. It's a rethinking of the structure, process, culture and even, in some cases, the very purpose of the enterprise."

Enterprise 2.0, why is it so difficult? And the "real" Enterprise 2.0, how real is this as a target?

Following the acquisition of Twine by evri, the Twine.com website will be shut down. Consequently, the Business Interaction Management and Organisational Change twine discussion forums will no longer be available.

Since the current evri website does not really offer a suitable alternative, we have decided to move the corresponding content to Diigo. This does not really offer the same capabilities as available before on Twine, but awaiting better alternatives, we'll have to live with it.

Readers who were subscribed to the RSS feeds of these forums should now subscribe to the RSS feeds of the following Diigo groups:
http://groups.diigo.com/group/business-interaction-management/rss for the Business Interaction Management group and
http://groups.diigo.com/group/organisational-change/rss for the Organisational Change group.

Please note that, given the re-upload of the content, older articles might reappear in your feed reader.

The presentation for this management briefing is now also available online. A description of the basic methodology can be found at www.xpragma.com/rim_basic.php.

Over the past days, the xpragma.be and xpragma.com websites have been migrated to a new server platform. Everything should be OK, but in case you experience a problem, please let us know.

Starting today, the Xpragmatic View is also available as a full RSS feed. This means that the complete text of the article is included in the feed and that you no longer have to click through to access the page on the website.

For subscribers who prefer the present shortened version, nothing changes. However, readers who want to switch to the new version have to link to the following address: http://www.xpragma.com/english/rss/xpv_full_en.xml.

Please note that full RSS feeds allow for less control of the layout and therefore, the display of the content is likely to differ from the one on the website.

Also take into account that the result will vary depending upon the type of RSS reader you are using.

Since a couple of weeks, Xpragma now also has a presence on Facebook. Users of Facebook can now link to our Facebook fanpage to stay updated about new publications and other announcements.

*** New management briefing ***

More than ever, Enterprise 2.0 is the talk of the town. However, the discussion remains clouded by a continuing bias towards tools and technology and the setting of unrealistic expectations. In this briefing, we have a closer look at the real internals of Enterprise 2.0, the dark forces of collaboration.

Please note that this is not a pleading against Enterprise 2.0. In reality, we do strongly support the use of this type of approach by any organisation. However, companies must be aware of the reality that adopting Enterprise 2.0 takes something more than just the implementation of a few tools.

Indeed, companies will only be able to reap the real potential benefits of Enterprise 2.0 if they are also willing to question some of the very basic assumptions about their present organisation. More than anything else, Enterprise 2.0 is about organisational and behavioural change and this is the real challenge that awaits you.

*** New management briefing ***

Reverse Interaction Modelling (RIM) is an approach whereby we try to envision how our interactions with customers, partners and employees have an impact on their willingness to do (more) business with us. Once this vision created, we can start thinking about ways to adjust these interactions or to create new interactions that will further strengthen this willingness.

In the context of business process improvement or organisational change, RIM is essentially an approach that aims at 'designing your business', step-by-step, top-down. Doing so, it allows defining the 'business boundaries' that will delimit our further process change work.

This briefing session consists of two parts. The first part is largely identical to the Business Interaction Management briefing, describing the overall context of the approach. The second part then presents the RIM approach for basic process change and illustrates this using a small business case.

*** New concept development opportunity

Reverse Interaction Modelling (RIM) is an approach whereby we try to envision how our interactions with customers, partners and employees have an impact on their willingness to do (more) business with us. Once this vision created, we can start thinking about ways to adjust these interactions or to create new interactions that will strengthen this willingness.

BPM (Business Process Management) has been a hot item over the past years. Still, most of the basic concepts of BPM have their roots in production and supply chain environments where repetitive, standardised processes prevail. Unfortunately, today's business environment has evolved towards a networked knowledge economy where processes exhibit far greater complexity and variability. This briefing is a pleading for a more interaction-focused BPM approach.