Last Friday, at an acceptable European time, I really enjoyed the first #E20S Expert talk. The topic is one that ought to keep the practitioners, or those directly responsible for change and adoption quite busy.
The experienced and smart panel was led by Björn Negelmann into a discussion with some surprises for me, and a lot of good advice. There was plenty covered in this hour, so I’ll get to it.
Time
This gets mentioned more and more. An inevitable realisation that comes with the years. Even though I practised various forms of social business throughout my career, I never did it under the umbrella of “Social Business”, or “Enterprise 2.0”, or “Office 2.0”. Nor did I do my work at one company, it is the nature of an IT Consultant. Besides all that, I never did see much progress.
A lot of ideas past the revue, and some got implemented, most died slowly in obscurity.
David Terrar expressed his concern about the time it takes to change an enterprise into a social business. Already going at it in 2006, he states “if you’d told me we would have made this little progress by 2013 I would have been deeply depressed”.
Luckily, David is an optimist and things are moving a bit faster than they did 7 years ago. We are are slowly hitting the mainstream.
For those of us who are relative new to SocBiz, we have to tip our hats to those who’ve been laying the foundations so vigorously.
The Trough of Disillusionment
However, there are signs we’re heading towards the Slope of Enlightenment. Knowledge and expertise is accumulated more rapidly, the trade is becoming more recognized and the necessity to change more accepted.
With companies like IBM leading the charge, others are waking up to the reality that we are passing into a new age of business.
Open Business
Another term that sneaked through the ether was a potential replacement for Social Business.
Mind you, like stated above, this would mean we’ve moved from Office 2.0, to Enterprise 2.0, to Social Business and ending up with Open Business.
Now, I have agree that this might be a better description. And it also might differentiate ‘Social Business’ better. One issue I come across a lot is people instantly associating Social Business with Social Media. And that’s far to simplistic a way to look at it.
Open Business might just trigger better questions and more enthusiasm.
On The Right Track
Despite ‘it’ taking a long time, and despite the challenges we face with adoption and change management.., we are on the right track. We are moving forward, faster and faster, stronger and stronger.
If you, or your business isn’t looking into adapting to these changes, you probably soon will.
During this Expert Talk a couple of problems (i.e. Challenges) are identified and solutions for finding more traction are given.
There is simply to much to write down in this article, a transcript would be nice to have.
However, I’ll give you a couple of bullet points of advice given to advance the adoption and change (in random order, without credit and paraphrased):
- Let people realize things can be done differently
- Go to the top, you cannot be effective from 3rd level management
- Connect with like minded people. Ideas come easier that way
- Redesign the workplace, allow for serendipity
- Get physical, teach networking and sharing with real live events (not just virtual)
- Use broader communication streams, do not limit yourself to the Digital Village
- Experiment, it’s OK to fail and let things get out of control
- Find support, there is safety in numbers
- Give credit to the company, openly, this encourages executive support
- Let employees figure out how they can best use the tools provided
- Trust employees
- Do not focus on ROI alone
- Dare to change the plan and the outcome
Well, I nice list I would say, there is a lot more to listen to so, I encourage you to watch the video below and join Björn Negelmann, Celine Schillinger, Joachim Stroh, Thierry de Baillon, David Terrar and Simon Dueckert in what I believe is a very rich hour.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhwAnsHo4C8?rel=0]
