Social Business Archives - Page 5 of 13

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.

Bridging Talent and Business

At IBM Connect, in the Netherlands, I had the change to listen to a presentation by IBM’s Laurent Boes. He should have gotten more time, but that’s just my opinion. His topic; Smarter Workforce. One slide, or more a summary, just made so much sense that I want to share it with you.

HR, front and centre

If we accept that unleashing your workforce is pivotal to the success of a Social Business, than we have to accept that HR plays a big part in this. This, however, is not about recruiting, but about assessing what we have (top employees) and how we can have their performance rub off on other employees.

And yes, arguments can be made whether HR is still a valid department.

AMC Theaters

A short example. As a case Laurent uses AMC Theaters and their interpretation of the information below. AMC found that the most valuable employee, the human who contributed the most to the net profit of the company, was the popcorn seller. By identifying and acknowledging this, they were able to train other popcorn sellers and new popcorn sellers and raise their revenue by 1.2% per customer.

Just imagine what effect that has on profit when added up over their 378 venues. Here’s a hint: millions.

The list, or workflow, then:

What job role has the biggest impact on the business

Depending on the size of your company, this might be quite a task. Of course, there are some roles easily eliminated, but you really should consider all.
It just might happen the mail intern does such a marvellous job that the impact on the company is confounding.

Be thorough in finding this role.

Why are great people great

When you’ve found the role, there’ll be people who do it better than others. This is not to discredit anybody, it’s just that some are more highly motivated than others, and thus, better at their job. Find out what makes them tick, what, exactly, differentiates them from the other.

Make some effort to get to the bottom of this.

Recruit, train and develop to that standard

Once you’ve established, or quantified, the standard, you can replicate it. Really, you can. For starters, you can adjust the hiring criteria to match the standard. Then, with the correct training, your new recruits will fit in better to the standard you’ve established.

The current employees can be trained and their assessments should, over time, reflect the new standard.

From liking to leading

The most successful employees within a company do more than just like their job. In a natural way, they tend to lead by example, simply because they do the job as well as possible.

That’s where you want to end up.

Innovate, transform, create

The consequence of this all is that employees are trained into a certain mindset. This mindset was unobtainable before it was quantified. This helps with changing the mindset and the philosophy of the whole company.

Over time, the newly hired, together with your champions, will act as trojan mice and will “infect” those employees who are difficult to change.

Time

As with everything, this process takes time. Especially when the goal is to change the whole company. But, with smaller steps, the return can be greater. Focussing on the 20% that make the biggest difference in the company, may provide the biggest yield.

The other 80% will come around.., in time.

Open Business, there’s light at the end of the tunnel

In the grant scheme of things we are merely pawns.

Most of us try to change the world, only a handful actually do. However, when it comes to social business, or rather society, things are slightly different. Here, numbers count. The more people involved with, lets call it “the movement”, the more chance it has of succeeding. Sounds logical, don’t it?

One of things I wrote about earlier, and I hope is inevitable, is the convergence of two different “movements” with the same name. There is a third, with a slightly different name, but with a very complimentary set of standards.

Open Business

Last week someone mentioned Open Business, I just had to check that out.

The definition according to Wikipedia:

Open business is an approach to enterprise that draws on ideas from openness movements like free software, open source, open content and open tools and standards.

So, yes, there is a difference between Social Business and Open Business, mainly the openness. Hence the term.

I do agree we have a long way to go, for any form of social or open business to establish itself firmly in our society.
Open business makes it a bit less abstract, meaning it might help us in clearing the air a bit around the enigma that is Social Business.

Social Business

Open business is NOT social business. It’s no the same thing. At most, it can be seen as part of the whole.
The way I see, it is neatly placed between the two existing definitions of social business.

The ideal situation would be combining the three into one, a very progressive way of doing business. Although not entirely unobtainable, it seems more routed in a Star Trekian philosophy than in the real world.

Below are the main ideas of concept of Open Business. You be the judge on how ‘real’ this is.

Open learning/sharing — a fundamental tenet is open collaboration at all levels in all locations
Open participation — open invitation to join the organization (similar to SourceForge, Blender community, where individual/team input within the community framework [for special services, consulting, training, adaptions, courses, camps, symposiums, books] can help to build individual income)
Individual rights — each person is supported and encouraged to identify and optimise their personal development, i.e. technical, personal, spiritual, etc.
Community focus — productivity activities are seen as part of a range of normal human activities e.g. family life, community life, religious commitments, etc.
Institution free — the organization is not based on any existing institution – state, religious or otherwise. Members can hold whatever views or affiliations they like.
Open knowledge — the free exchange of knowledge by making use -as much as possible- of open standards, open source and open content principles.
Open member details — including open access to the contact details of all other members in a convenient form (i.e. once the range and depth of those details have been approved for release by that particular member)
Open financials—all accounting information including the compensation of others

Some of these ideas are in tune with social business, others not so much. And some are outright difficult to achieve.

Awerness

In communicating these ideas, these values, combined with The Ten Tenets of Social Business, there is potential for some great implementations. Especially for fledging companies.

If any entrepreneur is starting a new company, it would be relatively easy to base its philosophy on these ideas. Anybody who wants to work for or with the company must abide to this philosophy.
Building it up like that gives you the very best chance of succeeding.

Changing an existing company takes more effort and time (but is not impossible).

Available Information

The good thing about all this is that all the information you need to change your business and have a positive effect on society is right available to you. The almighty and all knowing Internet provides enough reasons to become a social business.., or even an open business.

The choice is always up to you, whatever part you play within a company, anybody can start this. Having the support and involvement of top management makes everything a lot easier, but not having it, doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

However, help can be found. There are more and more professionals turning their attention towards social business. People with different backgrounds, like HR or Change Management, but with a common interest and a joint passion. The first step to a successful change is understanding Why this is important. It’s the first step on your journey towards the future.