Enterprise 2.0 - to be or not to be? Depends on how you approach it...

Andrew McFee of the Harvard Business School, author of the blog Impact of IT on Businesses and Their Leaders, has produced a list  "enterprise 2.0 infrastructures" in his post  from March 21st: "Uses for a Newborn Baby". 
Andrew's list :
1. For collaborative document production.
2. To build an encyclopedia.   
3. As a 'war room' for fast-changing situations.
4. For knowledge broadcast.   
5. For broadcast search.   
6. For 'crowdsourcing".
7. To express collective judgement.

Numbers 3, 5, 6 and 7 are especially strong concepts and well-described on Andrew's post. I especially appreciate number 3- an original way to describe a need that many organisations have but for which they have no obvious solution.

Shortly after, Tom Davenport posted "Why Enterprise 2.0 Won't Transform Organizations" on the Harvard Business Online site.  Tom says

"Most of the barriers that prevent knowledge from flowing freely in organizations – power differentials, lack of trust, missing incentives, unsupportive cultures, and the general busyness of employees today – won't be addressed or substantially changed by technology alone. For a set of technologies to bring about such changes, they would have to be truly magical, and Enterprise 2.0 tools fall short of magic."

Then Andrew responded from his post of March 25th "I STILL agree with Tom, and yet..." where the discussion continues.

The different posts between these two thought-leaders are "must reads" if you are thinking about how the "2.0" technologies will impact your intranet. Be sure to check out their earlier postings:  "E2.0 Evangelists" and "I agree with Tom, and yet..."

My views on the subject:

You can drive organisational change through meeting user and business needs and 2.0 will sometimes be the best way forward.
I have devised the following  5-step process for organisations considering 2.0. The order of the steps and the function-based approach  lower the risks of failure or stagnation.

Step 1: Start with an understanding of user, organisational and business needs. Then determine if  the intranet and/or portal is currently meeting these needs. If not, which needs are NOT being met?

Step 2: Then, analyse and transform these unmet needs into a list of functions required. Do not use references to tools such as blogs, wikis, .... Instead find out if people need to: publish  polished content, collaborate on documents, collect feedback from colleagues around the world, track progress on a project, build a glossary, find experts on a subject,  identify other people working on the same subject, etc. .
Investigate the response time needed for each: real-time, a day or two, several days.

Step 3: Look at the tools in place and see if they can provide these functions.
When doing this, take a careful look at the degree of technical expertise required to use the current tools, and don't forget that occasional users need more intuitive interfaces than daily users. The official full-time content producers for the intranet can learn and use a moderately complex tool, whereas the ordinary business manager who needs to share an idea, meeting minutes, respond to someone else's idea,  etc. a few times a month will need a tool with a simple, intuitive interface.
If the tools in place meet the needs, use them.

Step 4: If you need new 2.0-based  tools, start small and fast
Set up and run pilots quickly with groups of motivated users. Do not escalate the pilots into enterprise-wide operations. Gain some experience and then extend the user base by responding to other needs.

Step 5: Integrate and communicate
Once you have several new "spaces" or "services" operational, and assuming your intranet is reasonably well-designed and used, find a way to link them to the intranet. More important,  have the intranet link to them. Integrating them as soon as possible to existing, relevant intranet sites or portals will make them part of the enterprise IT landscape.

Then communicate. Use your paper publications to do short success stories. Include them in the "What's new on the intranet" section of the intranet.

Work with visible business needs
If you are able to identify  and address high profile business issues, the benefits will become visible quickly. If your new space or service is a "nice to have", it will probably not trigger a lot of interest.

When something new is happening, we all need to find words to label it. The 2.0 label is a good example. However, the  2.0 buzz does more damage than good in large organisations.  People get hung up on understanding the definitions then comparing it to the 2.0 things they see on the internet  rather than focusing on the new functionalities it brings to people and organisations.  When 2.0 is used to meet user and business needs, it will be integrated naturally into the enterprise.

The 3-question quick test before implementing a new technology
You can ask your self the following 3 questions before deciding to go further with a 2.0 idea for your organisation.
The answer must be 'yes' to 1 or more of the 3 questions. If you can demonstrate 3 out of 3, you are on strong ground.

These questions may also be a simple way to formulate the value of 2.0 when you need to explain/justify/prove ROI to senior management.

1. Does it let people perform an action  they could NOT do previously? (= new function)
2. Does it let people do something faster or cheaper than previously? (= easier to use, cheaper to implement and maintain)
3. Does it bring an added value? (= tangible or intangible benefits previously not attainable)

The  2006 Global Intranet Strategies survey (2006 survey) showed that very few large organisations have implemented an Enterprise 2.0 strategy. In addition to the specific questions about 2.0 (graph can be seen here) there was the following open question:

"Part of the “Web 2.0” philosophy is to make readers into contributors, and to make it easy for everyone to be active on the web. Have you implemented any specific initiatives in this direction on your intranet? Do you plan to do so?

Over 70 % of the respondents answered (73 out of 101), offering comments about their own 2.0 plans. The comments fall roughly into 4 categories:
A - have official 2.0 plans,
B - reasons why they do not intend to move in the 2.0 direction
C -  explanations of why they would like to but can't
D - comments on how there are other ways to encourage and facilitate employees' involvement without 2.0.

Three organisations fell into category A:

• "Yes, we plan to redesign our intranet based on the web 2.0 philosophy. We plan to present this new concept to senior management in September/October this year."
• "Our new intranet will implement Web 2.0"
• "2.0 is at the heart of our 2007 Intranet project"

The 2007 survey design is in progress, and the 2.0 section will be more detailed this year. Stay tuned...

Technorati Tags: intranet 2.0, intranet strategy, intranet2.0

Comments

[Stephan Schillerwein ¦ Schillerwein Net Consulting]

Great post, Jane! Couldn't agree more, esp. with the 5 steps process. Just had the chance to talk to many people on this subject on the recent CeBIT IT-fair and found (once again) that most companies just want all the blogs, wikis, tagging etc. with little or no clue as to the "why" and "how".

From my perspective a possible enhancement to step 4 would be to compare the company's culture against the culture that stands behind the Web/Enterprise 2.0 success stories. Both as an argument why enterprise wide extension of the pilots probably isn't a good idea and as a basis for addressing cultural deficits in a conrete way.

[Sam Marshall]

Hi Jane, I thought this was a really insightful summary and have blogged about it on the Intranet Benchmarking Forum blog. I do think there's an alternative approach that can work at times though that is less analysis-driven (http://intranetforum.typepad.com)

[janemc]

Hi Stephan,
I agree completely. The culture of most enterprises cannot support a massive 2.0 implementation. In my experience, the difference comes primarily from 2 aspects:
1. Size (small is easier) and
2. Sector of activity (technology, consulting sectors are more open as they already have a tradition of sharing. Also, they are sectors where power can come from being perceived as an expert - which means you need to share your knowledge to be perceived as knowledgeable!

Hi Sam,
I read your post on the IBF forum, and will respond more there. I agree with the Lab approach, and think it works best in certain cultures, as you said. In many large organisations, it would be considered "underground and dangerous" and dampened if discovered. Unless of course the benefits were highly visible. Unfortunately, even one slip can backfire into a "we don't want blogging in our company!" overreaction. More comments over on your blog...