The remainders of the day

The Xpragmatic View #123
August 27, 2009
by Marc Buyens (@mbuyens), Xpragma
marc.buyens@xpragma.com
url: http://www.xpragma.com/view123.php
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In management, failure seems to be the only way to get to insight. Whatever the level of experience we have built up in the past, as soon as we have to make decisions in a new context, we tend to forget most of the basic rules. Perhaps, this simply is the way we move forward.

Last Tuesday, there was an interesting guest post on ZDNet, written by Sameer Patel, titled Five ways to avoid Enterprise 2.0 failure. Sameer Patel is partner at Spanstrategies and blogger at Pretzel Logic.

Amid the avalanche of Enterprise 2.0 related posts and tweets we have seen over the past months, this was really a refreshing piece of insight, since for once, this really tried to highlight some of the root causes of potential Enterprise 2.0 failures.

Sameer Patel's five insights are listed here, but we recommend reading the complete post in order to really grasp the full meaning behind:

1. "What's in it for me". Not just "What's in it for us"

2. Social software plays an important but limited role towards Enterprise 2.0 design

3. Fix the True Break points in Your Organization

4. Figure out the Optimal Ownership Structure

5. There's Metrics and then there's Performance Goals

As said, for once, this really talks about the root causes of potential problems. In addition, as we can read from this post, the technical aspects and the tools have only a limited level of importance, far behind the importance level of the organisation and the interactions between the individuals that are part of this organisation.

On the other hand, we must also observe that, while providing interesting insights, most of these recommendations are not exactly "breakthrough" ideas. Most of the items Sameer Patel listed are indeed rather generic need-to-knows; recommendations that you will also find in other checklists such as "How to avoid problems in change management exercises".

And that is of course no surprise since, as already mentioned in Direction is a consequence, not a choice, adopting Enterprise 2.0 is essentially a change exercise.

So, knowing that the Enterprise 2.0 movement is already on its way for a couple of years, it is a somewhat sad observation that we only seem to be able to get to the right conclusions after having hit the wall a couple of times with our head.

On the other hand, perhaps there is no other way to move things forward. Perhaps, we humans simply need that little sparkle of silly hope that the next thing will indeed be completely different and annihilate all the well-known, boring constraints of the modern enterprise, before we get moving.

The next big thing.

Unfortunately, reality is different, but aren't we all creating our own reality?

About Marc Buyens

Marc Buyens is analyst, management consultant and owner of Xpragma. He 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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