Will LifeStreams replace the dashboard?
Streaming, lifestreams, News Feeds, they have all felt just a little bit revolutionary.
Facebook was one of the first applications that produced such a wide variety of information, both in volume and in terms of relevancy, that their introduction of the News Feed felt like the one thing they needed to make a leap ahead of the competition. I believe the News Feed saved Facebook.
Any time enterprise software needs to deal with large amounts of display data, the typical paradigm that we turn to is the Dashboard. A set of data display and input widgets that, bundled together, can provide a view of a large amount of data.
The problem with dashboards, full of widgets and throbbing with data, are that while they may offer an up-to-the-second view of their target data set, they do not offer a sense of change. Who or what created new data? Why? Can I communicate with them?
We need to experiment with streams and how and when they should replace dashboard components. Last summer we did an experiment with a US Aerospace company and when the dust settled, we had created something that looked a lot like this. We did, however, make some mistakes. We bundled all social interactions together and displayed those in the stream, but we did not integrate information about data set activity. That would be a powerful combination.
Will LifeStreams replace the dashboard? Will Streams just be widgets? Are there current Business Intelligence tools that integrate streaming? I want to know.
Break the Silence: Could silence be threatening even our strongest organizations
This is a repost, for posterity, so I don’t lose it.
Break The Silence, August 2003
The fact is that silence is strangling many organizations today. Employees and management are encouraged to speak out at only the most opportune time, after the appropriate lobbying has been done and they have their ducks in a row. This cultural quirk is often good for everyone as the person bringing the idea forward can avoid the embarrassment of having an idea “shot down” in a meeting or formal setting, and anyone above them on the hierarchy can feel as though they have already contributed to the idea, even if only by having known of it before it was presented.
“Consider what happened to one off-site meeting of top management at a web-based education company. Concerned about the company’s vision, the managers met to share and discuss different perspectives. But one speaker after another just echoed what the previous speaker had said. When any manager did dare to dissent, a colleague would quickly dismiss his idea. Having effectively tabled every discussion in which disagreement surfaced, the management team crowed about the level of “consensus” they had achieved. One by one they celebrated their achievements.” – HBR/May 2003
What is wrong with this picture? Even at an even peer level, members of an organization will keep remarkably silent in order to avoid confrontation. Often we will find one or two dissenters in a meeting, but a large proportion of attendees will keep silent.
Not only do we feel uncomfortable with communication on a peer level, but these problems are even more powerful between two levels of an organizational hierarchy. Consider how easy it is for a boss to send a “be quiet” signal to a subordinate. With minimal body language, a manager may not even realize what he/she is doing – but the signal is quite clear to the receiver, and the reverse is true as well. A boss will often be uncomfortable expressing new, but untested, ideas to a subordinate.
Where does this disconnect come from?
The exchange of ideas in many present day organizations is quite dysfunctional. The mere act of sharing an idea between levels on the hierarchy is akin to a direct command, and sharing ideas on the peer level will often result in complete silence around the table. We develop “spirals of silence” in which we create norms, procedures and ideologies all centered around having a gentlemanly silence.
The disconnect between members of an organization comes from the desire to avoid conflict and to accept, not affect, change only when needed.
What are the costs of organizational silence and disconnect?
The costs are very real. Resentment can grow and false social economies will foster a low status quo. When an organization needs to grow, or shift itself in some direction, it becomes unable to do so in any real way and change comes in very superficial manifestations. We begin to try to solve problems by altering rather than creating, and by keeping some old idea rather than tossing it. We are still able to accomplish things for ourselves as we can thrive on being agreeable within our hierarchies, but organizationally we are stalled and unable to affect change. Is there a solution?
How can we foster cultural change and open new lines of discourse?
An example from a Harvard Business Review article “Is silence killing your company?”
“Harry was a battalion commander, whose unit of more than 500 soldiers had just been miserably defeated in a mock battle . . . At first no one said a word. Then Nick, a very junior scout who was responsible for detecting and alerting the battalion to the enemy’s movements said “No, Sir, it wasn’t your fault. I fell asleep on duty.” Harry was shocked. But rather than focus on Nick’s failure, great as it was, Harry immediately redirected the unit’s attention to uncovering the underlying problem – the exhaustion the men were suffering.”
By avoiding putting the focus of the discussion on the person who spoke up, and concentrating on solving the problem at hand, Harry has rejected the norms of a military (organizational) model of communication. Not only has a meaningful discourse taken place, but the process was open and without that openness, Harry would never have known the true problems behind the failure. Had Nick not spoken up, Harry would have been forced to find the problems in other places and no useful change would take place.
A change in the prevailing culture of an established organization cannot come from the very top-down approach that is being reevaluated. It must come from people, like Harry in our previous story, who will lead by example. Facilitators and early adopters are key to the success of personal publishing in your organization. By bringing key figures into the picture, such as Presidents, Vice Presidents, and prominent people within departments, on board early on, the real need for openness and communication will be understood by the rest of the involved community.
Our new focus must move from the problem to the person. Much like Harry, we must empower people (or allow them to empower themselves) at all levels of our organization. By recognizing the power of discourse, we can encourage all levels within the hierarchy to speak freely. When “Breaking the ice” becomes a cultural norm, a powerful new way of working emerges. No longer are we stuck in a world where we can’t act creatively.
Creating a space where this kind of interaction can take place becomes a high priority. The problem with this type of change is that a Memorandum regarding a corporate cultural change would be the antithesis of itself. We must foster this change carefully, in a safe and comfortable space for everyone.
Why implement and invest in these new ideas?
Organizational communications are at the mercy of corporate culture. The more top-down our methods (newsletters, presidents reports, corporate newspapers) of communicating and directing, the more we formalize (by implication) our less structured interpersonal communications. Even the validity of our consensus building exercises comes in to question when we realize that our corporate culture may be fostering silence within the hierarchy.
Circles of 2.0
Susan and I have been working on articulating how the different worlds of “2.0″ fit together, or don’t, from the point of view of the enterprise.
All the credit really goes to Susan on this one.
We aren’t claiming that this is complete, or even correct as it is, but we think we are getting close. There is a lot of confusion out there about what is Enterprise 2.0, what is Social Media Marketing, what is Collaboration and what is just marketing.
I can’t tell you how often people mix a few together in a conversation, and next time I will have a better framework to explain some of the differences.
Why?
The biggest reason to break out the different components of 2.0 for business is that each has a distinct value that it delivers to the business.
When we mix these pieces, we obscure the value that we are seeking, and that makes it harder to measure results, define projects and to sell the idea in to the organization properly.
I will be writing a small series of posts exploring each aspect of the cornucopia over at the FastForwardBlog. Tune in.
It is easy to miss the point of Identi.ca
I started hanging out on Identi.ca a few weeks ago. When they decided to go a little more public today I blogged about it at startupnorth. It is easy to miss the point here, this isn’t about being a twitter clone, and it isn’t about jumping to the flavor of the week.
Do I think the experience on Identi.ca is better than twitter right now? No. Do I think there are better features on Identi.ca? No. Do I think we need a better twitter? No
What we need is for Microblogging to shift from being a closed world owned by one company to an open, standards based medium that does not risk dying if a single entity dies, either technically or financially. In the same way that Blogging no longer means having a blog on blogger.com, but instead you can have a blog anywhere and still be part of an ecosystem based on standards, conventions and a scalable model.
Gone Fishin’
Bringing Sexyback (in the enterprise)
Robert Scoble kicked off a huge debate yesterday.
I think there are two views of Enterprise Software which are, at their core, irreconcilable.
Will there be one winner in the end? Will there be separate streams of it development and thinking in the enterprise? I’m not sure about either, but here is how I see the current environment. If you do not draw the distinction, the debate gets very murky very quickly.
#1 - Supporting Existing Structure (rule based)
The first responder in yesterdays debate was my fellow Enterprise Irregular Michael Krigsman, who writes one of my favorite blogs, IT Project Failures.
Robert Scoble misses this point: unlike consumer software, where sex appeal is critical to attracting a commercially-viable audience, enterprise software has a different set of goals.
Enterprise software is all about helping organizations conduct their basic business in a better, more cost-effective manner. In software jargon, it’s intended to “enable core business processes†with a high degree of reliability, security, scalability, and so on. These aren’t sexy, cool attributes, but are absolutely essential to the smooth running of businesses, organizations, and governments around the world.
Michael pretty much represents the first, and largest, school of thought. Most of the Irregulars also seem to have the same definition of enterprise software,
The Results of this approach to enterprise software is that you are able to maximize efficiency, reduce costs and potentially enable some workflows that were not possible before a large system was in place, but you do it all within the existing structure of the enterprise. This is attractive, for example, to Private Equity investors who see an arbitrage potential in using large scale IT implementations as on tool of many to turnaround a business in a lagging industry.
A few of the conclusions of the enterprise software sexiness debate was that soon enough the presentation layer would be peeled back far enough that proper designers could focus more on the sexiness of the software and that would be the solution. That is a little thin on substance however, users are not actually screaming out for prettier interfaces. They really aren’t.
#2 - Surpassing Existing Structure (user first)
Stowe chimed in to the sexy-software debate and made a point that I can often be found making over martinis on a Friday: The next leap in software is putting the user first.
This is the second school of thought which is still emerging: it says that future enterprise software implementations will force massive changes in the very organization of the enterprise. The end goals for this school are to see networks surpass hierarchy. Cross functional teams will be the norm, efficiencies will be replicated and iterated with blinding speed and new product/service development will be a constant, not a project. By putting more power in the hands of the user, both functionally and organizationally, software will have this changing effect.
Front line employees, having access to the same knowledge and data (which was previously locked up), will contribute to the high-level decisions of executives through rapid feedback loops and clued-in executives will not react to obvious needs but will co-opt them.
So this is where we diverge.
A fork in the road, and it is where I think this Enterprise Hot-or-Not debate got off the rails.
You see, many average joes like Scoble are drawing a long-term assumption, and that is that enterprise software is going to converge with where consumer software is right now and where it is going.
The problem is that if you understand current enterprise systems, you know that can’t really happen. You can only hope that things will get a little prettier and perhaps that there will be updates to the software a little more often. IBM, Oracle SAP and others are already starting to deliver updates and UI enhancements more often than they once did (at least it seems that way).
What Scoble is imagining, and what people like Stowe and I dream about on long walks is fundamentally at odds with a large rule-based enterprise platform.
The middle ground that is emerging, which I am not a believer in, is that existing enterprise platforms will continue to dominate the user experience and that more social applications, like social bookmarking, wikis and perhaps blogs, will live alongside these systems.
There is one problem with that: Users won’t take it sitting down.
Those of us who have done large-scale social software implementations have seen that the results are much more nefarious: Once users begin to use social software in their daily work, it begins to capture massive amounts of their attention, and it also influences their thinking. This isn’t immediate, but it happens eventually and is significant.
All of a sudden users will begin to question arbitrary workflows in the SAP install, and they will be frustrated with how news gets pushed out on Sharepoint. The list goes on. The biggest problem isn’t that they are merely frustrated however, it is that they now have the tools to both express and remedy that frustration.
Once example we have seen is with a franchising client that was drop-shipping items to their franchisees who did not need them (this was to create a more consistent cost base for the franchisor). Previously a complaint to corporate would have resulted in a “we are considering your feedback” type response, but instead, the franchisee is now able to air their discontent with the entire network through an internal group blog, who in this case all had the same issue.
Old school (school #1 if you are keeping count) thinking would probably tell you to shut this conversation down immediately and to simply deny the existence of the problem because the drop shipments provided a significant benefit to the central corporation. Luckily this client sits in School #2 and can see that creating a more resilient network is far more beneficial than creating a single short-term efficiency. You cannot create resilient and self-healing networks with rule-based IT platforms. You need a combination of social software and business strategy to accomplish this.
Enterprise software will be sexy, and people will talk about it:
When it disrupts instead of enforces
When Enterprise software is changing organizations, it will make the news. When corporate hierarchies flatten and individuals contribute to both the work and the art of the organization, then it is something they will tell their friends about over drinks.
A sort of “and then the CEO admitted I was right, and I got 25 comments” moment.
When the user is in control
Configurability, personalization and sharing are not considered technologies by most users, they are a base use case for their personal lives. People understand control in a very serious way, and they know when they have it and when they do not.
When it is surprising
Software can be surprising in the best and the worst ways. It should still be surprising though, in some way.
When it changes
I mentioned earlier that people understand control in a very fundamental way. We all understand wealth in a similar fashion, and we know who is reaping the wealth from our work. When enterprise software generates returns for the user in the same way that it generates returns for the enterprise, then users will feel delighted. Whether it is more personal interaction, a sense of control or more personal time, the changes that will be noticed will not be in interfaces or firewalls, but in the actual everyday life of the user.
The Myth of Collaboration, War and Results
col·lab·o·rate (kÉ™-lÄb’É™-rÄt’)
- To work together, especially in a joint intellectual effort.
- To cooperate treasonably, as with an enemy occupation force in one’s country.
There are two definitions of Collaboration. The newer, assumed, definition that harkens images of employees floating amongst cubicles, surreptitiously contributing to dozens of projects, never staying too long as to not waste time, but always helping out just enough to make a difference.
Then there is what your grandfather would think about if you mentioned the word collaboration to him. Citizens in an occupied territory helping the occupier to advance their own goals.
Gun-to-your-head collaboration is no fun for anyone.
What kind of “collaboration” do we really expect most of the time?
2007: The Year of Enterprise 2.0?
I have heard from several people that 2007 is going to be the year that social software makes it’s way into the enterprise. Looking back, 2006 was the year of Video, 2005 the year of the blog?, somewhere in there Podcasting changed everything about audio, and social networking has helped a lot of people get laid.
The year for Enterprise 2.0. Powerful idea, and I can see it going a few different ways. The ways I want it to happen, and the way it will happen are probably going to be two different things.
If 2007 is going to be the year of Enterprise 2.0, then chances are that means that web 2.0 is going to be brought into corporate tools. That’s the obvious answer for some, but it’s not where many of us want to see Enterprise 2.0 go.
The ideal Year of Enterprise 2.0 could be more accurately called The Year the Enterprise Woke Up.
In 2007 we are going to see major vendors begin to push new product lines that make use of Ajax, Blogs and Wikis at an entirely new level. We will see some major customers make a shift to using these tools and some great case studies will probably emerge.
1 - I predict that IBM will release a suite of tools that includes internal blogging, social bookmarking, standardized framework for tagging of content across any platform. Reasonably smart companies will pickup this toolkit, but they will also have to be unreasonably wealthy, because IBM will bundle in a hell of a lot of expensive consulting. The consulting will not focus on the social and design issues around adoption and usage, but will focus on integration and marketing of the tool inside the enterprise. This will result in engineering teams and possibly marketing departments using the tools, but executives and front line workers alike will be left confused.
2 - Microsoft will, as announced, bundle a wiki product with Sharepoint. This may be bundled into all of their versions of Sharepoint, or Sharepoint 2007 Gold Wiki Edition(tm) will become the 10th version of the sharepoint product line. This wiki functionality will NOT integrate nicely into other platforms, and when installed will probably languish unused.
3 - At DEMO or other similar announcement-focused conferences, we will see at least a dozen SaaS enterprise toolkits made available who have been funded before they have an actual product. Most will ignore the more human side of enterprise software and will act more as an extension of Office 2.0 rather than a full embrace of Enterprise 2.0
4 - Confluence will most likely emerge as one of the big winners in the Wiki Space. We will probably see Ross Mayfield lash out in frustration, most of us will recognize that he is frustrated but is condemned to being the guy who put the most work into opening this space, only to have the much younger, but much more business savvy Atlassian take more market share. Google will not make any great new plays with Jot and Joe Kraus and the other Jot executives will either be gone from Google or will be distracted with new, fun, googly projects. Ross may surprise us, and I really hope he does, he deserves it.
5 - As the Enterprise market warms to these toolkits, some will start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. A market will get carved out for some of these companies, of which very few will be large enterprises, most will be small companies, 100 employees or less. They will adopt SaaS tools that help them share ideas better, and more often, they will not be as preoccupied with collaborative tools that focus on document creation, or knowledge storage.
6 - An all star team of consultants will form who will be one of the few groups able to lead companies through a process of Adoption, Integration and Normalization of social software toolkits and the re development of corporate org charts to address the new, flattened, world. The major consulting firms will come out with their own consulting “products” around Enterprise 2.0, but they will struggle with it as their best consultants will break off to join looser and more creative consulting groups, now that they have access to the necessary low-cost tools.
7 - Harvard Business Review will publish several Enterprise 2.0 articles, 2 written by Andrew MacAfee and at least one more by someone unexpected. These will be more focused on using new Web 2.0 toolkits to spur innovation, or to do your Knowledge Management.
What else do you see happening in 2007? I’d love to hear from Rod Boothby, Jeff Nolan, Euan Semple, Ross, Stowe and Dave.
Technorati Tags:
Enterprise 2.0, Confluence, Social Software, Office 2.0, Predictions, 2007
