The Changing Workplace: What's Hype and What's Happening?

2008-11-24T13:52:00.002Z

A quick note for anyone who might be reading this (not that there will be) to say that there will be no more blog posts.

I am closing this blog and starting a new Wordpress blog. Time for a new and much more focused direction.

2008-07-25T17:44:00.016Z

I took this picture of Novodevihcy Convent at dusk when I was in Moscow two weeks ago.

This blog post is about some random thoughts on the WorkTech North Conference in Manchester yesterday. Although the conference is advertised as "a forum for all those involved in the future of work and the workplace as well as real estate, technology and innovation", many attending were facilities managers, designers and architects concerned predominantly with the built environment.

The fundamental need to understand how people work and socialise, and how their workplace environments help or hinder them, was a constant theme throughout the day.

Joining the Dots

What struck me was the cross-cutting themes and inter-linked observations I am hearing at various conferences, and I was delighted to hear some of my intellectual heroes name-checked (Karl Weick, for example - see my earlier blog posts passim).

Professor Jeremy Myerson from the Royal College of Arts spoke compellingly about workplace design in the innovation economy. He asked what we mean by 'the knowledge economy'. He identified a continuum of knowledge work, which ranged from highly exploratory, tacit and unformulated (my interpretation) through to more explicit, proceduralised knowledge. The more explicit knowledge is that which is being outsourced.

It is the messy, diffuse, unformulated, creative knowledge we are good at in the UK. And workplaces need to be designed to support this type of knowledge work. So what does this imply for workplace design? Professor Myerson addressed the issue of collaboration and saying that although he is a proponent of open plan offices, developments have gone too far in the direction of facilitating socialisation and collaboration. The need for contemplation and isolation has been overlooked.

Richard Florida

Professor Myerson also referred to Richard Florida's book 'Rise of the Creative Class'. I heard Richard Florida speak at the Workplace 2017 Conference at the University of Waterloo near Toronto in October last year. I thought he was spell-binding. If you have 45 minutes to spare, Florida's talk is available, in two parts, here.

Florida emphasises the crucial role of place; human creativity and talent clusters in places where it is nurtured. He says that Thomas Friedman is only party right. The world is not flat, and electronically and economically global. It is at the same time flat and spiky. Economic activity is concentrated in mega-regions around the globe. He says that "we are seeing one of the greatest migrations in human history, as talented, innovative and entrepreneurial people concentrate in perhaps twenty or twenty-five mega-regions worldwide."

Place attracts people. Place matters, both the place where people work and where people live.

2008-07-21T15:58:00.017Z

It has been a while since my last blog entry, almost three months in fact. It has been a busy, interesting time.

Looking back through my previous sporadic posts, none of my reflections have arisen from what I do - which makes the blog lifeless and gives nobody any sense of what prompts my thinking about the changing workplace. So here goes.

Among the stuff I do, I have been working regularly in Moscow over the past two years with senior, director-level executives. They are taking their businesses in new directions, and my colleagues and myself are working with them to evaluate and implement new business strategies. It has been a pleasure and privilege to work with such smart people.

Smart is what you would expect

Smart is what you would expect at that level. What has been refreshing is their willingness to listen respectfully, to spot where our knowledge offering might have value for their organisations, interpreting for their own business and cultural contexts and using it most effectively in strategy development.

Be afraid, be very afraid ...

China and India are phenomenal innovators. We won’t just go down, we’ll go down big time if we don’t watch out. We have to think of the clever new ideas and be ahead of the game while we have the affluence and economic growth to invest in way-out concepts. That includes the way we work. Professor Cary Cooper, Director, Jan 2005

Those phenomenal innovators include Russian executives, who respect business education and learn very, very quickly.

2008-04-29T07:36:00.011Z

A 'new paradigm'?

The CIPD in the UK (Chartered Institute of Personnal Development) has commissioned Capgemini to produce a research report on Smart Working.

Smart Working: The impact of work organisation and job design, is the outcome of the first phase of an investigation to explore the hypothesis that "a new organsisational paradigm is emerging". The report concludes that the research "gives weight to the hypothesis that a new organisational paradigm is emerging" and that phase two should "assess and validate the existence of a new organisational paradigm of smart working".

Not before time

According to the Future Laboratory's Mobile Work Futures report for Microsoft in January 2007:

"organisational and behavioural structures take longer to change than technological ones. While the UK has unusually high levels of technology take-up, British businesses have shown lower-than-average ability to achieve the managerial innovations that could exploit it to the full."

This echoes a conclusion from the 6-year long ESRC Future of Work programme, which said that:

"the research points to a dramatic increase in the diffusion of new information and communications technologies in a wide range of jobs and occupations, but less dramatic advances in the management of people, which might ultimately hold the key to the performance gains that so many companies wish to achieve."

Slow to change

I helped to facilitate this knowledge exchange workshop last week, on the theme of 'Open Your Mind To Smarter Working'. The workshop was energetic and the content well-received by workshop participants. I was presenting case studies that I had created as part of a research programme I led four years ago, and what I had to say was new for the people who attended.

Establishing the existence, or not, of a new paradigm is of course interesting to consider.

But getting to grips with how we can best go about communicating what we already know, and making it usable and customisable to help businesses adapt to the tsunami of changes that are coming at them (technological, demographic, economic and organisational re-structuring) - now that is urgent and more worthy of the CIPDs efforts than proposing supposed new paradigms.

2008-04-28T08:18:00.010Z

The months feel like they are zipping past at warp-speed. Scary.

The image for this post is of a shop window in a vintage clothes shop off Carnaby St in London. My other half and I must be a bit odd - we love taking pictures of shop dummies and have quite a collection.

Anyway, to the serious stuff. This blog is intended to take the pulse of how enterprises are adapting to rapid changes in the operating environment. I have not really started on that yet, apart from commenting in earlier posts on mass bannings of access to social networking sites by a large number of UK businesses. I suppose my recent posts have been an attempt to lay some foundations for the analysis that will unfold in future posts.

Linear blog posts do not lend themselves to adeqate descriptions of dynamic, complex, inter-related concepts. I claimed in an earlier post that I was going to create a simple picture to map the core elements that make up and influence organisational dynamics. Here it is - ta-ra! I have a reason for mapping my interpretation of what constitutes Smart Working - more of which in a later post.

The eminent sociologist Manuel Castells says "we are not in the information or knowledge society, at least no more than we have been in in other historical periods." His view is that the emergence of 'a new technological paradigm' is responsible for "a new social structure - powered social networks".

He concludes that "we must let the notion of an information society or of a knowledge society wither, and replace it with the concept of the network society".

Although Castells is talking more generally about wider societal structures, it has always been the case that business enterprises are at core inter-related networks of human relationships. Businesses attempt to mediate, influence and control these networked, relationship dynamics through the imposition of formal systems, which are designed to impose behavioural order and achieve strategic performance objectives.

In my view, the phenomenon of social networking reminds us that organisational entitites are essentially dynamic networks of complex, adaptive systems. Which is why I think Weick provides such strong thought leadership in understanding how organisations work.

2008-03-10T08:15:00.016Z

A minimalist approach to organisational dynamics

The image today is street sculpture, old tube trains, in the Spitalfields area of London.

I have been threatening to explore Weick's analysis of what happens when nine people work together. Weick recommends adopting a minimalist approach to understanding organisational dynamics. He reckons if you can understand nine, you can understand what can happens when thousands work together.

To me, this sounds useful in helping us better understand collaborative dynamics in enterprises. Part of the rationale for starting this blog is frustration at the sweeping claims made for how digital technologies like social computing, collaboration and mobile technologies, emerging at the same time as fundamental economic, demographic and geographic shifts, are going to lead to a tsunami of organisational transformation. I have said repeatedly in previous posts, who knows what will happen?

W.Edwards Deming is supposed to have said that “It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.” That's what I think. I also think that existing knowledge provides foundation, 'first principle' guidance on how to understand, anticipate and adapt for business leaders who are able and willing to change.

Weick's Analysis of Nine

Starting at the very beginning, Weick says that the dynamic action of organising is accomplished by processes, and that processes have elements that need to be described. The elements in organising are "individual behaviours interlocked among two or more people". The basic building block of organising is a dyad, that is two people. Behaviour between two people is contingent, that is influenced by and dependent on the behaviour of the other. People change each other's behaviour at the level of the dyad.

Weick calls this unit of analysis an interact. He says, "the unit of analysis in organising is contingent response patterns, patterns in which the actions of an actor, A, evokes a specific response in actor B - which is then responded to by actor A". This further response by actor A completes the sequence and is referred to as a 'double interact'.

The core contention his classic book, The Psychologyof Organising, is that the double interact is the stable component in organisational growth and decay (more about this much later).

Weick sees the crucial transition point in organising dynamics happening from:

one person to two

from two to three

from three to four

from four to seven

and from seven to nine.

We have already seen that two creates interdependence, reciprocal behaviour and accomodation to another person. The next transition from two to three creates the possibility of alliances. As Weick says, this is a key transition point because now there is the possibility for control, co-operation, competition, manipulation and influence. He continues, "these phenomena, formerly suppressed, now become more visible and subject to manipulation and sanction".

Now in my mind, this begins to link with enterprise social networking and collaboration. Social networking technologies present the possibility of making visible previously hidden networked relationships and interactions. Even so, my experience of being a member of online networks has shown me that hidden dynamics still go underneath the apparent openness and and sharing.

Anyway, I am getting ahead of myself. I will continue with the other transitions in the next post. For the moment, I think my diagram (all rights reserved) shows how complex the interactions among just three people can be - one person is complex enough. And then our behaviour is highly dependent on another two complex and constantly changing people. That's even before the moderating influence of the social and physical environment is considered.

2008-03-05T06:40:00.011Z

Supplementing, not supplanting the old (3)

The image today is a detail from a building in London.

Picking up from where I left off yesterday, I claimed that Weick offers us insight and ways of thinking about what happens when networks of people act together. I then said I would explore what the significance might be for enterprise social networking dynamics. I suppose I should say what I mean by enterprise social networking.

Social Computing

According to Forrester** social computing is:

“a social structure in which technology puts power in communities, not institutions”.

Consumer power is wreaking significant structural change in entire industries (traditional broadcasting and music), and changing how businesses communicate with consumers. User-generated content, increasingly captured and distributed on mobile digital devices at the point of inspiration, is a key way in which communities are created.

People are adopting social computing technologies on their own terms, with no permission or direction and for their own purposes.

Social Networking

Wikipedia has social network ing as:

“a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency”.

And again the emphasis is on social structures and interdependency, which I think implies community. Nothing about technology in the Wikipedia definition, and technology features in a supporting enabling role in the service of communities, creating the possibility for networks and communities to acquire power.

Social networks can exist and function independently of technology, in which case they tend to be hidden and function out of sight. Social networking technologies make visible the networks of connections among people that are usually hidden in the real world.

Although the blog discussions about Enterprise 2.0 tend to include the social context of collaborative technologies, it seems to me that the details of what social dynamics typically look like, and what factors might influence these dynamics in the direction of creativity or destruction, are not given much attention.

There are many theorists and existing research studies that can shed light on these issues. Patience, mon ami. I am getting there (slowly, I do admit). It occurs to me that I need a big picture to map all the inter-linked topics underpinnning the arguements I am developing. My other half, John (responsible for all the images on this blog) is already on the case.

Weick says, "... relatively small units become eminently sensible as places to understand the major workings of organisations ... a minimalist approach to understanding organisations is a productive way to start".

Looking forward to the next post, I will try thinking about Weick's analysis of nine in relation to social networking dynamics. I am just thinking this through properly for the first time, so I might confuse and contradict myself. You have been warned :-)).

**Social Computing: How Networks Erode Institutional Power, Forrester Research 2006

2008-03-04T09:31:00.013Z

The new supplementing, not supplanting the old (2)

We took this picture just off Brick Lane in London early last year. The place is a magnet for cool.

The starting point in helping me to understand how organisations work is Karl Weick. I am not saying it is the only place I could begin, but it is where I started. Serendipity led me to pick his Social Psychology of Organising off the shelf of the library of Cranfield University early in my doctoral research explorations.

Weick says there is no such thing as an 'organisation'. Rather, he descrbes the process of dynamic organising as an outcome of "conjunctions of sets of procedures, interpretations, behaviours and objectives to be achieved." He points out that "the appearance of continuity and repetition in processes across time is attributable to the rules and procedures that regulate behaviour ... most 'things in organisations are actually relationships tied together in systematic fashion".

So what?

Weick for me gets to the heart of the matter. In all the excitement about enterprise social networking, Enterprise 2.0, focusing on the technologies and making generalised statements about the need for senior executive support and creating receptive cultures, Weick offers us insight and ways of thinking about what happens when networks of people act together. Social networking is not new, in fact organisations have always just been exactly that - patterns of relationships constrained and enabled by an enterprise's formal systems.

He does a really interesting thing in the last chapter of the book. He says that "if we can understand how nine people go about the work of getting organised, producing, dissolving and restructuring, then we should have some clear idea of what to expect when we watch one thousand people go through the same activities"

I will have a go at thinking this through tomorrow - and what its significance might be for enterprise social networking dynamics.

2008-03-03T06:14:00.005Z

The new supplementing, not supplanting the old (1)

The image today was snapped in Brighton one summer's day last year. I just love the girl's style.

A comment left over the weekend on my very first blog entry gently suggested that what I had written might 'cause slight degree of cognitive dissonance'. And I agree. What I had written was unclear. In my response, I reflected that I am using the blog to sort out what I think.

As well as monitoring current global workplace trends, I look backwards at earlier research across a range of academic disciplines - social psychology, sociotechnical systems, systems thinking, organisational behaviour, psychology of learning, organisations as complex adaptive systems etc.

We all have our favourite organisational theorists and observers, and mine will become clear as these posts unfold. What is behind this blog, and my dislike of of hype, is my desire to give kudos to the deep thinkers from the past, whose work gives big clues to businesses as to how they can choose to respond to the strategic implications of current economic, technological, geographic and demographic trends.

Andrew Pettigrew and Evelyn Fenton say "the present condition of management thinking and practice with its repetitive recycling of fads and fashions, and a management research community often excited and deluded by novelty makes it difficult to be sceptical of revelatory language" (p280). I think this is a reasonable thing to say, based on research I have conducted and reviewed, and the businesses I have worked with since 1995.

They also say that we should be open to the possibility that innovative forms of organising may emerge incrementally and radically, involve progression and regression, and be characterised as the new supplementing the old rather than the new supplanting the old. This, again, is a stance that makes sense to me.

Finally, in their comprehensive literature review of theoretical perspectives of new forms of organising, Pettigrew and Fenton review process-perspectives of organisational design, drawing on concepts of value chains, networks and virtual organisation - which suggests that "the object of empirical study needs to be organisational processes and patterns of relationships". They go on to say that many apparently new forms of organisation are not entirely new and reminiscent of earlier forms.

This preamble provides the context for what I will do tomorrow, which is start at the very beginning - as I see it.

Thanks for reading this far!

2008-02-29T07:55:00.008Z

The image is the ceiling of the atrium at the British Museum. It looks glorious on a sunny day, with shadows cast on the floor and walls. I was at the museum a week or two ago to see the Terracotta Army. The tickets were timed entry and the earliest we could get was 9.45pm. Looking up at the sky and seeing the moon through the atrium was something else.

Today is very busy and there's no time to think properly about writing something for the blog. I have been thinking though about how I would like it to develop. Once I get into my stride, what I would like to do is add the question 'So what?' to every blog entry. If anyone does ever read this blog, I will consider it a privilege. We are all so time-pressured and information overload a real problem.

The 'so what?' will probe the practical implications of the topic being discussed. I will try to provide you with practical hints, suggestions, diagnostics and tactics that others have found effective in adapting working practices, job design and organisation structures in response to workplace trends - bearing in mind that what might work in a particular context and set of circumstances may not work in another.

2008-02-28T07:51:00.018Z

Today's image is an Anthony Gormley figure, taken outside the Royal Festival Hall in London on the day of the 2007 Tour de France speed trials.

Back to the article, which I co-authored with Dr Marie Puybaraud for the Knowedge Management Review and which I threatened to summarise in a post a couple of days ago.

Marie and I facilitate the Johnson Controls' Global Mobility Network, which is a learning network for senior IT, HR and Facilities Management executives. We started out nearly three years ago to explore workplace mobility. As we considered the wider link between the business environment and mobile working, we realised that mobile working encompasses a more pressing set of global issues. We identified the following:

Global mobility of talent (people)

Global competition for scarce, well-educated and skilled knowledge workers is creating physical migration of people to places where their talents are in demand. Highly skilled migrants are likely to be young and their entry into the workforce helps to make up for the deficit of home grown talent. Growing diversity on multiple fronts, including culture, age, communication styles, and differing attitudes and approaches to using communication technologies are creating a significant challenge for managers, ways of working and workplace design.

Global mobility of economic sectors

This change is related to the global mobility of talent. Thomas Friedman's contention that the
globalised world is flat is a view Richard Florida challenges as partly correct. Florida sees the world as spiky. What he means is that despite electronically-enabled, distributed, remote and virtual working, the prominence of place remains. He speaks of a “new geography of creativity” and links increased physical concentrations of people to the shift from industrial sectors to the rise of geographically co-located high-tech, knowledge-based and creative industries.

Global mobility of work (roles and activities)

As well as talent and specific sectors being on the move, work and roles are more generally relocating as businesses use the world as their supply base for talent and materials. Sharif Khan, VP HR at Microsoft Canada, speaking at the Workplace 2017 conference about the urgent need for Canadian businesses to attract and nurture talent, claimed that as workforces become increasingly distributed, talent will be sourced from a global talent pool into which a domestically-based company can cast its net. Roles and activities will locate where the talent is.

Global mobility of economic opportunity

IBM’s Chief Executive, Sam Palmisano claims that the very nature of corporates is changing as activities locate where they are best done. Western corporates are, as the Economist puts it, shifting their centre of gravity to the emerging economies. In the process, they are experiencing highly competitive local labour markets, the need to contain rising labour costs and the need to innovate to head off threats from local corporates. These businesses learn quickly and present stiff competition. As these local corporates grow, a two-way acquisition and relocation of businesses from the growing economies westwards is likely. (Ref: Economist Briefing: IBM and globalization, The Economist, April 7th – 13th 2007)

Global mobility of collaborative relationships

As Sharif Khan indicated, business structures are fragmenting into dense, highly-connected networks. The boundary-less office is here with the formation of partnerships, alliances and fragmentation of supply networks. This article from Microsoft says that "the once popular perception of the corporation as a standalone, self-sufficient entity is as out of date as prohibition ans snake oil ... large corporations are beginning to look like social networks", consisting of collaborative relationships that might be entirely virtual, or a mixture of virtual and face-to-face – within and across organisational and national boundaries.

Underpinning all these trends, of course, is the digital infrastructure that is enabling and energising these global trends.I will pick up on each of these trends in future posts, and explore their strategic implications for businesses seeking to adapt to these far-reaching and simultaneous global workplace trends.

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2008-02-27T08:11:00.016Z

The image today is taken from our collection of graffiti spotted around the Brick Lane area in London, where there is a supply of constantly evolving street art.

I said yesterday that I would be writing about the article Dr Marie Puybaraud and I had published in the Knowledge Management Review journal. I have decided to postpone summarising the article for another time. There are just too many interesting conversations going on in blogs, following the recent Fast Forward conference.

The conversation I am reflecting on is the linking of Enterprise 2.0 technologies and Knowledge Management, as articulated by Tom Davenport and Andrew McAfee. Following these inter-linked conversations spawned across the different blogs, I find an interview (posted by Jon Husband) with Dave Snowden in which he says many things that are consistent with my own views - shaped by my past research and business engagement, and by other organisational theorists and observers who are saying similar things.

The thought I would like to pursue is the place of rewards and incentives in knowledge sharing. Dave Snowden's view is that financial incentives have no place in knowledge work; that knowledge interaction emanates from trust and is voluntary. In agreeing with him, I find myself reflecting on the role of non-financial incentives - crucial in knowledge work, in my view.

My doctoral research in the mid-90s was about the circumstances under which shopfloor operators contributed or witheld their knowledge. In case after case, people engaged enthusiastically in continuous improvement and process innovation so long as they were listened to, saw their contributions taken seriously and received recognition. There were of course grumbles about how much the company had saved, and how little financial reward was given in return. The lack of financial reward did not usually prevent voluntary contributing of knowledge.

The appropriation of people's knowledge was highly contingent though; knowledge could, and was, withheld as soon as people felt abused or aggrieved. As Dave Snowden says, knowledge is voluntary and based on trust. Context is everything.

Towers Perrin last year published the results of a large-scale survey on attracting and retaining talent. The analysis was based on 88,600 individual responses from 18 countries. One of their high-level findings was that people in general have a deep need for meaningful and challenging work, which confirms what we already know. They also found that many people were willing to engage in discretionary effort but that business leaders were not creating organisational systems capable of tapping into and channelling their energies.

The presentation of the findings at the the Workplace 2017 Conference (which I spoke about in yesterday's post) identified the following influencers of employee engagement:

Primary Influence
Learning and development
Senior leadership
Company image and reputation

Secondary Influence
Openness to challenge

Tertiary Influence
Empowerment

Have social media and Enterprise 2.0 technologies, will collaborate and share knowledge for the sake of my employer's business?

Yes, but only if I think it is worth my while, i.e. in line with my personal objectives, meets my personal needs for recognition and social connection, and leads to my work being more challenging, meaningful and with opportunities to learn and develop.

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2008-02-26T09:19:00.018Z

I have decided to start adding images, which will usually have nothing at all to do with my blog posts. This wee fella makes me smile, and that's a good enough reason to post his image - don't you think?

A blog post two days in a row? Sacre Bleu! I don't suppose anybody is reading this blog yet, so in fact this is what talking to myself sounds like. What else can I tell you about what has been happening since I was last writing here six months ago?

Dr Marie Puybaraud, Director of Global Workplace Innovation, Johnson Controls and I co-facilitate the Global Mobility Network. We had an artcle, 'Adapting to the Dynamics of a Global Workplace', published in Knowledge Management Review in December 2007.

The article describes how the network came into being, what is it, who it is for, and how it approaches the complex and evolving set of topics that make up the globally changing workplace. Marie and I propose in the article that the network's loose, experimental approach and soft-touch facilitation might provide a model for effective talent management of senior staff.

I will will be summarising the gist of the paper over the next few blogs.

2008-02-25T13:42:00.009Z

My Failure as a Blogger

Loads has happened since last September, both professionally and personally. It's hard to know where to start. I suppose the best place is right here, and the best thing is to pick up where I left off.

It is not so easy to find a personal voice. None of me came through in the careful analysis of the earlier posts, so I will try being myself.

One of the most significant things I did professionally last year was to hop on a plane to Toronto and go the Workplace 2017 conference at the University of Waterloo. The keynote speaker line-up was impressive. The conference was three glorious days of thinking, reflection and entertaining, stimulating conversations with academic colleagues and business leaders.

For me, Jim Balsillie was particularly thought-provoking and Richard Florida was spell-binding. What I also found remarkable was the consistency of the messages being communicated by the speakers.

The main theme of Dr Frances Westley's talk at the research forum on the first day was the need to integrate knowledge and purpose. She spoke about workplaces increasingly emptying of meaning, and people’s rising frustration in not being given the opportunity to make things happen.

Later in the conference, Nicholas Crook and Dan McCauley presented findings from a Towers Perrin survey, of 88,600 individuals in 18 countries, around attracting and engaging talent. One of their high-level findings is that people enjoy challenging work and want to learn, but there is a gap between the discretionary effort that people would willingly invest and how effectively organisations tap into and channel their commitment and energy.

Will Enterprise 2.0 technologies restore meaning to work through social interaction? I would love to think these technologies will energise opportunities for learning and creativity. I am cautiously hopeful, although changing control-derived mental models will not happen overnight.

2007-09-02T08:41:00.000Z

Facebook - Business Friend or Foe?

I have been arguing in my last couple of posts that people within business enterprises connect as they see fit, and will not be constrained by formal systems in organisations. Blocking access to social enterprise sites is therefore futile, especially since they can be accessed through mobile phones and hand-held devices.

This article claims that authors Dennis Howlett and management consultant Don Tapscott, belive that “the Facebook generation will wipe out the command control infrastructure in business today.

Who knows what will happen? I used to think that social media, including social networking sites, would be like a hand grenade lobbed into businesses - shifting the balance of power in favour of employees, giving them a collective voice and forcing previously less enlightened indifferent employers to listen and be more responsive to employee needs. Now I am not so sure. Employers of choice don't have to be forced to be open and communicative. I think these are the businesses already getting the potential of social networking sites. As for the rest - as I said, who knows what will happen?

The author of the article I referenced earlier in this post said "Of course, one can simply disable Internet access for most employees, while at work. You can decide for yourself whether that makes good sense. Most executives will not want to take such a drastic step."

Well, if an item in theguardian Saturday 25.08.07 is to be believed, that is exactly the drastic step executives are taking in as many as 70% of UK workplaces, which are reported as banning access to Facebook during working hours. I get nervous of passing on unsourced and unsubstantiated statistics, and this one should be treated with caution even if it does appear in a quality national broadsheet.

The newspaper item compares divergent attitudes of two large organisations. The first is Transport for London, which 'has become the latest employer to ban Facebook'. Ernst & Young, in contrast, places no limit on using social networking sites. Richard Jordan, head of employer brand, is reported as saying "One of the reasons why we're so open about using social networking sites is because this is one of the largest ways the web has changed in recent years - and it's important that our people understand that and how the web works."

What I find so interesting about the Ernst & Young response is that it is not couched in terms of advantages or disadvantages to the business - although Jordan does go on to say that keeping in touch with friends within the business who move around 'can be useful'. It is recognising that that is how the world is (connected and complex) and not how businesses might like it to be (controllable).

It remains to be seen if businesses that adopt a knee-jerk banning of access to social networking or video sharing sites reflect on the wisdom of their decisions and change their minds.

2007-08-23T16:33:00.000Z

Lurking In The Shadows

I think that Stacey's concept of the legitimate and shadow systems, which I mentioned in my previous post, gives us a clue as to why adoption of Enterprise 2.0 technologies by individuals might differ from their readiness to adopt Web 2.0 technologies.

We need to deal first with terminology. Web 2.0 technologies are characterised by their role in harnessing collective intelligence. Enterprise 2.0 technologies are the same technologies except that they exist behind the enterprise firewall.

Web 2.0 technologies are democratising. Nobody has to seek anyone's permission about which technologies to choose, and when and how they are to be used. People are using them to contribute spontaneously and with alacrity to the creation of user generated content. This is happening to such an extent that corporates and brands are having to change how they engage with customers. Traditional media companies can no longer broadcast to silent, compliant audiences. Richard Sambrooke, Director of BBC's Global news Division is reported as saying that:

"We don't own the news anymore. This is a fundamental realignment of the relationship between large media companies and the public"

Given that people connect and communicate as they see fit to satify their own needs and to suit their own purpose, then the corollary is true. They can withhold their contributions and participation in formal systems that companies invest in to meet strategic business objectives.

Enterprise 2.0 technologies deployed with the intention of harnessing collective intelligence are obviously components of companies' information systems design, part of Stacey's legitimate system. It's no surprise to me then that people might not leap to embrace formal Enterprise 2.0 technologies if imposed or at odds with their values or personal objectives. It also depends on whether or not the culture and reward systems make it worth their while.

Respondents in a recent McKinsey Global Survey said they regard Web 2.0 / Enterprise 2.0 technologies as strategic, and they plan to increase investment in these technologies. A key theme to emerge from the McKinsey research is that adoption and dissemination starts at grassroots, driven by 'inspiration and passion'.

What shadow system dynamics tell us is that people will connect anyway. It is in companies' own interest to create conditions as favourable as possible to encourage user generated collective intelligence for the company's benefit. Treat people well and trust them; without that returns on investment are likely to be jeoparised and potentially destructive conversations will take place outside the firewall.

2007-08-22T10:28:00.001Z

Standing On The Corner, Watching All The Trends Go By

Episode Two - The Barricades are Breached!

Yesterday's post mentioned how some businesses are blocking access to social networking sites. Well, the indicators are that this strategy might not work. Here's why I think resistance is futile:

(a) Ralph Stacey says that shadow systems in organisations are where those who have not been given formally sanctioned authority take control for themselves. Shadow systems can be destructive or creative - it depends on prevailing organisational cultures and how people are treated. Politics, jockeying for position, cliques, cabals, skulduggery, the exercise of subversive power, resistance, creativity, collaboration - it's all there in the dynamic shadow system. And management cannot control it.

People will connect and communicate at will and as they see fit, with or without technology. If it is with technology, and access to social networking sites is prohibited, people can easily engage outside the organisational firewall using their mobiles.

(b) If we accept that it is probably (though not exclusively) young people who use social networking sites, then another reason why businesses may be forced to live with social networking sites is that skilled young people are scarce. They therefore have bargaining power. Block access to social working sites? What sort of signal does that give off about a potential employer? Ah, we'll just go and work somewhere else.

This article quotes someone as saying that “the Facebook generation will wipe out the command control infrastructure in business today". That is exactly the sort of unsubstantiated hype that sets my cautious academic teeth on edge. Still, I think the indicators are that contingent factors will be persuasive in increasing the take-up of Web 2.0 technologies (bearing in mind what Andrew McAfee was saying about the division between those businesss who 'get it' and those who do not).

The article says that 'the youth market' is 100% of the future market for sales of communications services and products". Young people are also 100% of future managers, which makes it more likely than not the the barricades will be breached.

2007-08-21T09:42:00.000Z

Standing On The Corner, Watching All The Trends Go By

Episode One - Man the Barricades!

Gartner's Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies 2007 report highlights Mobile, User Interface and Web 2.0 innovations as hot-to-trot issues for enterprises. Gartner believes these technologies are worth adopting early because of their potentially high impact.

User-generated content is seen as a defining feature of Web 2.0 / Enterprise 2.0, which I think implies social networking. And here we have a problem. Despite the potentially high impact of adopting Gartner's recommended technologies early, there is evidence that social networking sites are seen as the new threat to productivity.

In this article, networking sites are good for business, and social networking sites are bad for business. In this one, (thanks, John) Facebook in particular is very bad. Access to social networking sites must be banned. Boo-hiss.

Andrew McAfee cites a number of reasons to be pessimistic about the adoption of Enterprise 2.0 technologies, one of which is culture. This is 'defined and shaped over time by business leaders'. He says,

"I predict that the diffusion of these tools is going to sharpen differences among companies as some work to foster the new styles, modes, and practices of collaboration and others work (subtly or overtly) to squelch them".

Well said, Professor McAfee. Self-evident but needs to be repeated often.

2007-08-19T16:26:00.000Z

What's it all about, Alfie?

I get frustrated at the amount of uncritical stuff I read about how workplaces are changing radically in the face of rapid technological and global economic re-ordering. There's no doubt that far-reaching changes are happening in our workplaces - or will. For the moment, the evidence is that change is more evolutionary than revolutionary.

I would really appreciate your comments, information sources, criticisms and whatever other things you feel like contributing to help me explore what's hype and what's happening in UK workplaces - and beyond. It would be great if we could all do it together.