Rogier Noort, Author at Rogier Noort

Post*Shift and the Long Term Change

Last February, in Paris, I was fortunate enough to catch Lee Bryant’s talk about how to approach the adaptation of Social Business within a company. I caught up with him a few days after #e20s to discuss this vision, and Post*Shift, a bit more in-depth.

Throughout the conference, several talks covered several approaches on when, or where to start the Big Change. With all the different people, each with their own discipline and field of expertise, came a lot of different thoughts on how to approach this.., issue.

We had Change Agents, Community Managers, Business Strategists, Platform Specialists, and all-round Social Business Evangelists (and more). All were present and provided a piece of the puzzle.

Everyone

Now, I know, we need everyone to transform a company. There is no way a single individual, or a single discipline can achieve this. Only when we work together will the sky be the limit.

However, the element of focus in Lee’s talk was the adaptation of the hierarchical structure of a company.

Wow, wait a minute. So, we don’t start with aligning the business goals? Or creating a community? Or with a (small) pilot project to establish a proof of concept?

We go straight for the spline of a company?

No Rogier, we do not. Pay attention.

In my defence, if you watch the video below, at the 1 minute mark, you see a tall, well suited man walking towards the front row. That would be I, said the fool.
I missed Lee’s introduction, because, you know, I needed to open my laptop and check the #e20s tweets.

Moving Beyond

The key phrase of that intro was;

We need to look very seriously at the organisational design structures, IF we are to go any further with social technology.

This became apparent when I asked Lee if he would start with changing the organisational structure within a company. No, he would not.

At some point the (often old school) organisational structure will limit the progress of change. This is why you have to consider a way to adapt that hierarchy to suit the flow of information and the natural tendencies of humans to talk with whomever they want, and find resources and help where they are available.

Hierarchy does tend to bring with it an element of politics.

Solving problems laterally, instead of hierarchically saves time and a frustration. A more real-life interpretation of a hierarchy doesn’t follow the down-and-up-and-down flow of the org chart anyway.

In the end, we’re all in it together. And dealing with issues in a harmonious and transparent way will, at some point, turn into higher productivity (and many more benefits).
Sure, those who thrive on playing the office politics game won’t like this. But then again, they don’t add anything positive to begin with, and can only change for the better.

The slide below visualises the difference between an org chart found on the corporate Intranet, and the way people communicate in the real world.

Post*Shift

I also wanted to ask Lee about his new venture. This has been on the radar for a while, but now that Post*Shift is a go, it’s time to address it.

The thing I noticed when browsing the Post*Shift website was this;

We have developed our own (proprietary) Framework for assessing a company’s progress against a number of key attributes relating to structure, culture and practice, establishing a solid base on which to undertake modernisation initiatives.

I like that. One of the biggest issues which pop-up is where to start. With this tool you can assess the base-line of a company. For instance, if you’d want to know how agile your company is, you can ask very specific questions to determine just that.

And, on a larger time scale, you can measure it (ponder the importance of that for a minute).

Of course, it is a combined experience of many years (of the six people that make up the company) that results in the capability of creating such a tool. Then, being able to interpret it correctly, providing an enterprise with a (very) long-term roadmap, and supporting that enterprise in all the steps that need to be taken is, in a word, impressive.

Time and Customisation

Few businesses have such long term impact on a business as Social Business does.
And few businesses require such high customisation as Social Business does.

The ability to be flexible enough in your approach to cater to any business, and have the ability to see into the future can never be underestimated.

I wish Lee and the rest of the Post*Shift team the best of success, I’m sure they’re of to a good start.

I leave you with another quote from Post*Shift’s website.

After 10+ years of pushing the notion of social technology as a business operating system, the idea is now mainstream – the headshift we tried to create has happened – but we have only begun to touch on its long-term impact on how business is done.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gookq0SviQ?rel=0]

Elevator Pitch: I help a business maintain its fluidity.

First of all, apologies for the two selfies, I needed a picture of (or in) an elevator, I found two. Second, this is one of the longest posts ever on this blog, so the title is cleverly misleading. The actual pitch is all the way at the bottom, so you can scroll down, if you so desire.In this day and age, where on-line relationships are more rampant then ever.., we sometimes tend to forget that the real world relationships are much more.., precious. It’s fine to meet somebody on-line, have a conversation or a discussion, even build something valuable. But, at the very least, have a good long Skype talk, with video, to get to know somebody beyond the 140 characters.

At the last #e20s, I met John Wenger, and, if you know him.., well, he’s one of those guys you have to meet for real. But.., the on-line conversation I had afterwards, was as interesting as the one off-line.

He asked me… What is your elevator pitch? Damn, and here I thought we’d just chat for a bit, forgo on the tough questions. But.., no…

However, I do have a pitch, or several, after asking myself ‘Why‘, I came up with;

Social Media Integration. Don’t Panic.., you too can get it under control.

For now, that’s still on my Twitter profile. On my website it’s a bit deeper, but not much;

Transform your Business into a Social Business. Unleash your Human Capital.

I stand by both of them, but do they convey what needs to be conveyed? In a literal sense, yes, they do. Question is, do you want to be literal, or does a good metaphor work better?

According to John, it does. And I have to agree. I used both pitches a few times and received a lot of blank expressions. Sure, after explaining the statement, I sometimes have a change to explain the underlying ideas about Social Business. And, of course, at a Social Business conference you get a lot of head nodding and affirmation with these statements.., but they understand the game.

Rethinking

So what do I stand for? What do I deliver? How can I help a company? And.., why? In order to answer those questions, I think it’s best to go back a decade or so, and look at the flow of my IT career. Let me tell you why.

Back in 1998 IT was booming and companies grew so fast that they were reorganised twice a year. In my opinion, many (little) companies were build with one purpose, to be sold as quickly as possible. Consequently, I kept the same job for 12 years, but was employed by 5 different companies.

You get to learn to be flexible, to adapt. New branding, new e-mail, new pay-checks, new managers, new colleagues, new CV’s.., etcetera.

Tech vs. Humans

I started out in tech, networks. Learning about LDAP, IP packets, network configurations and so on and so forth. Tedious. Learning a lot and ending up on a helpdesk (or customer service desks, as they are now called). I took too much time helping people, never really quite made the quota. But, my customers were happy. I tried to help people, instead of closing a ticket as fast as possible.., thought it more important.

This started to be a trend for me. Solving communication problems between IT and Business. Speaking out at meetings, because none of the IT guys would. And finding myself more and more interested in the front end, rather than the back end.

I shifted my focus towards the Internet, and was placed on webserver maintenance. Errr… Nope, that’s not what I wanted.

Content Management

My first real experience with what we at the moment call Social Business, came with content management assignments. This was far more interesting, because I got to deal with people, instead of machines. It was still a one way connection, as far as the Internet went, but I was on to something.

With the advancement of technology, the platforms became slightly more interactive. Privately I already had a blog, build websites and tried to engage.

Social

Ever since I started in IT there had been one constant. The need to connect, to share, to retrieve information quickly and efficiently. However, this could not be done. Several attempts were made, with each takeover another brilliant idea failed miserably.

My last throes in IT circled around a Board of Subject Matter Experts. Our task was to come up with a platform which could unite employees and their on-line efforts. I never got to enjoy the end result, because by then, I needed to leave the nest. My IT days were over.., time to move on.

Back To Now

What interests me most about Social Business is the way it has the potential to change the way we live. On a fundamental level.

Think about it, if we change the way we work, the way we live our lives during office hours. This, invariably, will have an impact on our daily, and personal lives. It already does. Current office environments can be extremely nasty places to spend your precious time. Gossip, office politics, harassment, intimidation, bullying.., these things happen, all the time. And we take it home, get depressed, or even have burn-outs.

Can you imagine if you could turn that around? Turn that negative experience into a positive one. Can you imagine what that would do to a company, to the individual employee? Try…

Communication

The major issue that I come across is the blockage of information through lack of communication.

I know that with Social Business a primary objective is improving business goals through the use of social tools. And that’s all good and well. But the average employee has absolutely no interest in that during their day-to-day work. I never cared about the business goals of the company I worked for. I didn’t even know them. I wasn’t even told about them. Well, maybe in a very general manner. And it was always the same message; “Thanks for the hard work the past year. We did well, but not well enough. We need you to work hard for the next year”.., rinse and repeat.

But, communicating these goals, involve employees, ask for feedback, sharing the information, or even being informed on the decision making process, might just result in a rise of employee engagement which is so important for a successful enterprise.

Fluidity

At last.., now we’re getting somewhere.

Once you start with a metaphor, in this case the flow of water, you can come up with tons of examples, or at least quite a few.

Bruce Lee pointed out the adaptability of water. It always takes the shape of it’s container. It can crash and it can flow.

For a business this translates pretty well. When you let information flow where it needs to go, in an organic and natural way, those who need the information, receive the information.
And when it’s time to crash, maybe with a quick-to-market product, you have a much better change of doing so by directing the flow where it needs to go.

Or take a dam. A marvel in engineering, but, when the pressure is too high, it can burst. If you keep your employees mute, and in the dark, you run the risk of building up a pressure which you cannot control. Easing the pressure with a steady flow prevents unnecessary problems, or risks.

On a much smaller scale, a plumber can be, at times, the most important person in your life. When there is a blockage in your piping, you’d be very happy when somebody can find that blockage and remove it.

As you can imagine, there are plenty of examples.

So, when you ask me what I do, I don’t say; “I’m in Social Business”, but, I say:

I help a business rediscover its fluidity.

And if they ask what that means, I say;

I help you to make sure the flow of information runs like a well maintained river. Because you do not want to obstruct or divert it too much, when you do, it becomes unpredictable, and maybe even dangerous. Water (information) needs to flow, and be redirected when applicable. Irrigation needs to be set-up, so you can be sure it gets where it is needed, in the quantities you desire.

Be like water my friend.

The Agile Elephant in The Room

It’s interesting to see that despite economic downturn, people are still starting up new businesses. Entrepreneurship, it seems, is hard to kill.

I knew I had a photo of an elephant somewhere

I don’t believe we are still in an economic crisis, in fact, I believe there’s always been a fair measure of exaggeration by governments in order to push other agenda’s (raising taxes, cutting expenses or giving business a reason to downsize), but that’s just my suspicious mind. Nevertheless, starting a new business takes courage and audacity, especially in these times.

In Social Business, however, the momentum seems to enable a wave of new, and exiting, undertakings.

During a conversation with David Terrar (@DT), at #e20s, we explored the current Social Business market development, and I asked him about his new venture; Agile Elephant.

Not The Right Term

David explains, “We ran an event in 2013 called “Patchwork Elephant”, which was part of Social Media Week London. We had eight speakers talking about Social Business, or Enterprise 2.0. And it turned out these terms are somewhat difficult to explain to business people.

We don’t have the right term for Social Business yet, people confuse this with Prof. Yunus’ version, where an enterprise has a social purpose. What we do, is use social tools to make business better, more effective, do better teamwork, and connect with our employees, teams, customers in a better way, with less resources.”

It used to be Office 2.0, then Enterprise 2.0, and has evolved into Social Business (as coined by Peter Kim). To me, it seems “Social Enterprise” is a more appropriate title. Although, this one too is associated with the enterprise having a social purpose. So, a proper, unifying name is still to be found.

David continues, “We’ve been going at it for a while now, at least as far back as 2006, already 8 years now. And we’re really getting traction, but the actual change will be 10, 20 or maybe even 30 years in the making.”

This explains why people (and big business) are venturing into Social Business. Social Business is not just a change, or a project. It’s a fundamental evolution of the way we work. And that takes time.

So why “Agile Elephant”?

“The first reason we started Agile Elephant is that something is just about to hatch. Social Business is just about to cross the chasm, and start to become more mainstream.

We feel the optimism that something is going to change. And we either want to jump on the wave, or, if the wave doesn’t start, we want to help start the wave.”

Based on the conversations I’ve had during (and before) #e20s, I had the distinct feeling that this line of thinking is inherent to Social Business. It’s not enough to ‘just’ make money, or to ’just’ have a job. This ‘evolution’ is a passion to those I speak to.

“We call it Agile Elephant because we think this topic is the elephant in the room, also based on a number of books about change with an elephant as the metaphor, but also about the parable of the Elephant and the Blind Men, where one feels a wall, the other a rope, the other a tree and so on.

The point is, this topic viewed differently by different people, it’s complex. That explains the elephant. The agile part comes from using a lean, agile, approach to a project.”

Social is a custom business. One size does not fit all, quite the opposite, every company requires a different approach.

This is part of the Agile Elephant Manifesto, as David explains, “We have a thirteen thesis manifesto to lay out the important things of getting Social Business right. It’s the Agile Elephant approach to Social Business.” This is good for a business to have, but also, like the Ten Tenets of Social Business, provides a great reference for fledgling Social Businesses to see what is involved with this change.

Here’s the list:

We want to transform “business as usual”
Business has become a social object
There are no one size fits all solutions
Social business needs to work across the entire value chain
Treat people as Individuals, not nodes or cogs
It’s time to get real
Stop talking technology, start talking results
We need to focus on the practical and the pragmatic
Don’t worry about what we call it
It’s the people, stupid!
Learn from what has worked so far
Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it
Our approach should be in “perpetual beta”

I invite you to read the entire manifesto on the Agile Elephant website.

From The Top

The combined wisdom of Agile Elephant’s three founders provides the company with a solid foundation. Here they have extensive knowledge of business processes (such as ERP and CRM), which they can combine with their thorough understanding of Social.

Businesses need to change from the top, business goals need to be aligned with social goals, business problems should be solved with social tools, and all of this needs to be connected in order to get the right statistics, proper big data, and much better results across the board.

I really enjoy these developments. Companies that start up with a unique and fresh look on the way we do business, the way we work, and ultimately the way we live.