The Maginot Line (Per Wikipedia): The fortification system, built at huge expense of time, money and material resources, utterly failed to contain the Germans in World War II. The term is sometimes used today to describe any comically ineffective protection.
Collective ability, in command of all enterprise resources including technology, is the civilian equivalent of the coordinated and disciplined might of the Germans in WW-II. The similarity ends with the effect of coordinated power. It has to be induced to ward off adverse politics and cannot be established by the command control culture that drives the army. Personnel must enjoy autonomy of thought and control over their actions without sinking into chaos.
The compelling way of working fosters the collective by anticipating the permissible actions and driving their execution. Dependence upon discipline is eliminated. Reliable and intelligent application of security ensures access is confined to selected personnel. In addition, space, time, continuity, mobility, focus, direction, anxiety, etc., are all easily satisfied by the automatic organization of data, information and knowledge to assure adoption. The leadership acquires powerful means to create and influence the collective mind in the virtual space, and is spared the frustration of reasoning with inaccessible and distributed minds.
Survey results at Calgon Carbon (~1999) establish the power of collective ability: For every 10 percent increase in trust and teamwork, the company can achieve a 20 percent to 30 percent increase in financial results within two years.
The only protection against collective intelligence is another collective intelligence focused on the pursuit of success.
Friday, February 23, 2007
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Top Down Or Bottom Up?
Prima facie, Enterprise 2.0 and Presence software require a supportive culture. Their adoption is therefore top-down dependent. However, their potential to sustain adoption makes them bottom-up friendly. In contrast, the Science induces its own culture. Hence, once it is introduced by the management, its spread is bottom-up.
The question has overtones. It also addresses the Jeffersonian belief that no human being is fit to wield power over others. This has proved itself often enough in the corporate and world stage yet the reality is that organization performance depends on top-down management power. Drucker sought to liberate employees with Management By Objectives, which still underpins most management practices. It enables subordinates to work with autonomy and "self-control" rather than as pawns manipulated from above.
The operational question then becomes: Do the 2.0 avatars enable autonomy and self-control? They could if they were to foster communities of practice but they securely belong to the paradigm that ‘IT is a tool’, viz., they cannot assure a practice within the community. The tools have the potential to nurture ‘freedom’ but the fact is they do not.
The science delivers an architecture that is bottom up in adoption as well as in its creation of communities of practice. Yet, it respects the importance of management power by creating a reliable mechanism to spread the influence of leadership.
The question has overtones. It also addresses the Jeffersonian belief that no human being is fit to wield power over others. This has proved itself often enough in the corporate and world stage yet the reality is that organization performance depends on top-down management power. Drucker sought to liberate employees with Management By Objectives, which still underpins most management practices. It enables subordinates to work with autonomy and "self-control" rather than as pawns manipulated from above.
The operational question then becomes: Do the 2.0 avatars enable autonomy and self-control? They could if they were to foster communities of practice but they securely belong to the paradigm that ‘IT is a tool’, viz., they cannot assure a practice within the community. The tools have the potential to nurture ‘freedom’ but the fact is they do not.
The science delivers an architecture that is bottom up in adoption as well as in its creation of communities of practice. Yet, it respects the importance of management power by creating a reliable mechanism to spread the influence of leadership.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
The Return Of The Fizzle
Perhaps the common factor behind the fizzling out of ERP, Dotcom 1 and Knowledge Management was the failure of the industry to converge with knowledge work. I say this on good authority:
Conclusion of five ERP case studies (Scott Elliff A, Organizing for Excellence: Five Case Studies, Supply Chain Management Review, Winter 1998): Even the best-conceived process initiatives will fall well short of potential without aggressive organization of people.
Tom Davenport, pioneer of Knowledge Management (July , 2003): “We’ve been experimenting with IT support for knowledge work for several decades now. When will we figure out what works?”
The conventional wisdom today is that the flow of knowledge cannot be organized and driven by IT. Hence, whatever advance takes place loses steam because personnel must consistently spare their energies and observe discipline to either respond to it or adopt it. This dependence upon a support culture applies to use of Web 2.0 within the enterprise and has led to the inevitable:
Review of a recent Dow Jones VentureOne and Ernst & Young report: While venture capitalists invested $455 million in Web 2.0 companies in the first three quarters of 2006, not a single Web 2.0 startup went public during the year. Perhaps more worrisome, just four Web 2.0 companies were acquired - can they make money?
It is possible that convergence of IT with teamwork is the missing element for catalysing a coming together of ERP, KM, SaaS, SOA, Dotcom 1&2, etc., to satisfy the huge unsatisfied demand for raising collective ability. Today only hype connects them.
Conclusion of five ERP case studies (Scott Elliff A, Organizing for Excellence: Five Case Studies, Supply Chain Management Review, Winter 1998): Even the best-conceived process initiatives will fall well short of potential without aggressive organization of people.
Tom Davenport, pioneer of Knowledge Management (July , 2003): “We’ve been experimenting with IT support for knowledge work for several decades now. When will we figure out what works?”
The conventional wisdom today is that the flow of knowledge cannot be organized and driven by IT. Hence, whatever advance takes place loses steam because personnel must consistently spare their energies and observe discipline to either respond to it or adopt it. This dependence upon a support culture applies to use of Web 2.0 within the enterprise and has led to the inevitable:
Review of a recent Dow Jones VentureOne and Ernst & Young report: While venture capitalists invested $455 million in Web 2.0 companies in the first three quarters of 2006, not a single Web 2.0 startup went public during the year. Perhaps more worrisome, just four Web 2.0 companies were acquired - can they make money?
It is possible that convergence of IT with teamwork is the missing element for catalysing a coming together of ERP, KM, SaaS, SOA, Dotcom 1&2, etc., to satisfy the huge unsatisfied demand for raising collective ability. Today only hype connects them.
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
The Case Against “Presence”
In May 2005, when the pieces of the present Collaboration market were falling into place, Jonathan Spira, CEO of Basex Knowledge Consultants, published in the Basex Newsletter a letter he had written to the editor of Business Week . Its theme sentence was provocative:
“Two of the world's largest software companies just don't get what collaboration and knowledge sharing is and their products reflect a lack of understanding of the needs of knowledge and information workers and how they work.”
Few were willing to define standards for collaboration back then though “community of practice”, viz., free flow of knowledge among a group driven by common interests, and its value for raising "collective ability" were established concepts. Collaboration was so difficult to achieve in practice that any form of collaboration was welcome. To a great extent this applies even today.
Recently Passerini of P&G was quoted as saying: "For collaboration tools to help, they must be completely embedded in the work processes”. This is an echo of Davenport (Nov., 1999): “.. knowledge management has to be “baked into” the job. It’s got to be part of the fabric of the work to import knowledge when it’s needed and export it to the rest of the organization when it’s created or acquired”. Knowledge Management fell short of creating a community because it became focused on methods for knowledge sharing. Similarly, collaboration today is being understood as a product of tools. The goal of collective ability is over-shadowed.
The Live Communication Server (LCS) of Microsoft integrates with various applications so co-workers can collaborate from a spreadsheet, a document or line-of-business system, such as CRM. It also integrates with videoconferencing, Web conferencing, phone systems, e-mail, calendar, directory programs and public IM systems to create a presence-enabled work environment. This is expected to have a major impact on the way the enterprise collaborates, communicates and operates. Likewise, Lotus has assembled all the social networking capabilities it thinks are useful under a single umbrella.
Provision of tools is a far cry from organizing people and driving their individual effort towards a collective goal. A horde of strong men could have replicated the strength of Hercules but directing the strength to channel a river for cleaning out the Augean stables demanded the binding and driving force of organization and purpose that only Hercules could manage. Similarly, harnessing IT to sweep away the problems of collective ability requires a clear understanding of the force sought to be released so that its thrust may be organized and suitably channeled in the desired direction.
Collaboration quality must be defined not in terms of half way marks like knowledge sharing or a tool attribute like 'presence', but in terms of assurance of a coherent community where people share, listen, learn and evolve, in the words of Mary Parker Follett (~1926), ‘composite ideas'.
“Two of the world's largest software companies just don't get what collaboration and knowledge sharing is and their products reflect a lack of understanding of the needs of knowledge and information workers and how they work.”
Few were willing to define standards for collaboration back then though “community of practice”, viz., free flow of knowledge among a group driven by common interests, and its value for raising "collective ability" were established concepts. Collaboration was so difficult to achieve in practice that any form of collaboration was welcome. To a great extent this applies even today.
Recently Passerini of P&G was quoted as saying: "For collaboration tools to help, they must be completely embedded in the work processes”. This is an echo of Davenport (Nov., 1999): “.. knowledge management has to be “baked into” the job. It’s got to be part of the fabric of the work to import knowledge when it’s needed and export it to the rest of the organization when it’s created or acquired”. Knowledge Management fell short of creating a community because it became focused on methods for knowledge sharing. Similarly, collaboration today is being understood as a product of tools. The goal of collective ability is over-shadowed.
The Live Communication Server (LCS) of Microsoft integrates with various applications so co-workers can collaborate from a spreadsheet, a document or line-of-business system, such as CRM. It also integrates with videoconferencing, Web conferencing, phone systems, e-mail, calendar, directory programs and public IM systems to create a presence-enabled work environment. This is expected to have a major impact on the way the enterprise collaborates, communicates and operates. Likewise, Lotus has assembled all the social networking capabilities it thinks are useful under a single umbrella.
Provision of tools is a far cry from organizing people and driving their individual effort towards a collective goal. A horde of strong men could have replicated the strength of Hercules but directing the strength to channel a river for cleaning out the Augean stables demanded the binding and driving force of organization and purpose that only Hercules could manage. Similarly, harnessing IT to sweep away the problems of collective ability requires a clear understanding of the force sought to be released so that its thrust may be organized and suitably channeled in the desired direction.
Collaboration quality must be defined not in terms of half way marks like knowledge sharing or a tool attribute like 'presence', but in terms of assurance of a coherent community where people share, listen, learn and evolve, in the words of Mary Parker Follett (~1926), ‘composite ideas'.
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