• Thinking about “Design Thinking” | Manage by Designing | Fast Company

  tags: no_tag

  • I grow more bothered by the week with the phrase “design thinking.” I know full well that I am fighting a losing battle, but I think it is an unfortunate term for describing what designers have to offer to other disciplines, which seems the most common reason for using the term. As is a way of talking about what designers can contribute to areas beyond the domains in which they have traditionally worked, about how they can improve the tasks of structuring interactions, organizations, strategies and societies, it is a weak term.
  • For it is not in the modes of thought that designers most distinguish themselves, but in their actions. Designers act differently than analysts or decision-makers. Design is an extreme activity. It tends to call on all of the faculties of those engaged in it. It is contextual. It is embodied. It uses the whole person’s mind and body, left brain and right, hand and heart, analysis and taste. And it never gets enough of any of them.
  • I think it is so much more powerful, demanding, and relevant to invite lawyers, doctors, politicians and business people to design rather than to engage in design thinking.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Being at reboot made me miss out not only the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston but also Kongressmedia’s Intranet Summit 2009. Sad thing, normally I would have been there for meeting other consultants like Saim or Stephan and above all meeting practitioners and getting to know more about their intranet projects and approaches.

Good then to have fellow bloggers Frank Hamm and Saim Alkan compile extensive documentation on the talks (to be found in the documentation wiki open to the attendees), write up their learnings and impressions (Saim: Der Wert eines Inranets - live vom Intranet-Summit 09 #its09 and 2. Tag: “Der Wert eines Inranets” - live vom Intranet-Summit 09 #its09, Frank: Review zum Intranet Summit with links to nine (!) further blog posts, all german posts alas).

In my mind this blogger-generated extra content is a definite added value to being at a conference, it’s a mark of excellence that separates good from very good conferences. That said, “excellent conference” may mean different things to different people, but I am sure that “blogger relations” (some hold that installing a “blogger hub” is the way to go, like Braden Kelly expands upon in Conferences 3.0) make a difference. And for the things to avoid see Gerald’s list - things that make conferences less attractive.

What’s on your mind - are there other things of importance for the upcoming E20SUMMIT and the ECM World?

Well, a lot of interesting stuff happened last week - and some very lucky people like Lee Bryant, Stowe Boyd or JP Rangaswamy were experiencing both the Enterprise 2.0 conference and reboot, while I only managed to go to Copenhagen, some of my write-ups are here and here.

So it’s playing catch up a bit, which is easy as some good content is distributed as video. Like here I blogged about a video interview with IBMs Suzanne Minassian on the new Lotus Connections and more. I will add some more posts and observations from the E2Conf either at frogpond or (probably as crosspost) here.

And there are more additions to the video backlog, like the recording of the dinner talk with Dion Hinchcliffe we arranged at CeBIT in preparation of the E20SUMMIT. You can see me sitting in the back, listening in on closely to what Dion says (although I met him already at the hotel and accompanied him to the restaurant, chatting) - this was an intimate setting and lots of good questions got asked. Sound quality isn’t that good (and you can hear the restaurant staff shuffling around) but Dion is coming across quite clearly (”RoI is famously hard to measure on Enterprise 2.0“)

Unfortunately the processing of this video at the Sevenload site took more time than expected. Anyway, in the following you find a nice fireside discussion with Dion Hinchcliffe - interviewed by Dr. Frank Schönefeld from T-Systems during a press event we made at CeBIT 2009. Mainly they are discussing the latest developments on E2.0 in general, its adoption in the US and Europe as well as how to evaluate the effects of E20 activities. On the last aspect Dion pointed out that “ROI is famously hard to measure on E2.0″ and his urge to put together more case studies in order to evaluate the effects.

Sevenload Direkt

1.) What is your name?

James Dellow

2.) Who are you and what are you doing?

I’m a consultant working in the field of social computing. I work for Headshift, a specialist social media and enterprise social computing consulting company. Headshift was founded in the UK, but has been operating in Australasia since 2008.

3.) How did you get to the E2.0 topic?

Many people mistake me for a ‘techie’, but I have never worked in an IT department. During the early part of my career I found myself in the position where I was the person who was the go-between for business and IT. I became interested in Enterprise 2.0 through my experiences in knowledge management (formed at Ernst & Young), and then later as a consultant working with a range large organisations (particularly with CSC) - as a result I have an appreciation for both the organisational and technology challenges that Enterprise 2.0 aims to change.

I also completed a Master of Business & Technology at the University of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia) in 2005 - so my feet are firmly planted in the grey area between social and computing.

4.) What is your understanding of the core concept of the Enterprise 2.0 idea?

I approach Enterprise 2.0 with a management perspective - heavily influenced by systems thinking - that takes into account the relationship between the social and technology aspects of applying Web 2.0 inside an organisation. This means results will vary between organisations because of the complexity of those relationships and the environment where they exist.

In practice this means I don’t believe simply installing a blog or a wiki makes you ‘Enterprise 2.0’. But equally, without the technology its doesn’t work (at least at the scale we need - Andrew McAfee captured this well in his SLATES model). In my own thinking I’ve tried to distinguish between Enterprise 2.0 and other applications of Web 2.0 inspired information management technologies under the theme of Intranet 2.0.

Also, despite my background in knowledge management, I don’t treat Enterprise 2.0 as the next iteration of knowledge management although its is very complementary.

5.) What are the main potentials of the Enterprise 2.0 idea?

I’ll answer this in a round about way. When we look at the evolution of our modern industrial society (embodied in the classic organisational structure), information and communication technologies (ICT) have been at work in the background supporting and shaping this evolution. Critically they have allowed organisations to scale, while also extending their organisational span of control so they can achieve their objectives in at least a semi-cohesive way.

However, with this growth and globalisation the actual environment for organisations has become more complex. As a result the command and control approach that ICT supported in the past is failing to keep up.

To operate effectively, we need systems that allow people to work in a way where social controls direct action and allow problem solving, not fixed hierarchical processes that are inflexible and often out of date. The experience of Web 2.0 on the Internet is already demonstrating that there is a better way for organisations to learn from.

This doesn’t mean the future won’t be transactional either - Amazon and eBay are all examples at one end of the Web 2.0 spectrum that mix efficient high volume transactions with social controls.

But as we move towards Enterprise 2.0 we need to remember that its not just about changing technology, at the same time society and the shape of organisations will also be changing. As a result, the workplace might also become a little more fun and interesting because of Enterprise 2.0.

6.) What are the main challenges, threads and issues of the Enterprise 2.0 idea?

To quote Clay Shirky,

“Every story in [Here Comes Everybody] relies on a successful fusion of a plausible promise, an effective tool, and an acceptable bargain with the users”

This gets back to the point that there are set of complex interactions at work that determine how successful any organisation can be with adopting Enterprise 2.0 as a way of organising. However, many people choose to only focus one aspect. This is a recipe for failure.

On the organisational side, Enterprise 2.0 is a clear challenge to existing organisational power structures. Information is power only if information access and flow can be controlled - but Enterprise 2.0 changes that rule and some people will be threatened by it.

On the technology side many of the strengths of the Web 2.0 model are hidden from the average Internet user - however, when we move Web 2.0 into organisations much of that hidden Web 2.0 infrastructure (both technology and people) is missing. Unfortunately, traditional enterprise IT management often works at a tangent to the Web 2.0 approach, so there is some ‘pain’ associated with this change.

7.) Please give us three tags that describe your person and work best?

business-and-technology, systems thinking, collaborative

8.) Please give us three links to articles/contributions that describe your views best?

You’ll also find more articles here, but three selected are

• Intranet 2.0
• Sharepoint and Enterprise 2.0
• Error! This Enterprise upgrade requires Change Management 2.0 is installed

9.) Please give us three names of colleagues that you would refer to as brother-in-spirit?

• Jon Mell
• Kim Sbarcea
• Cai Kjaer

To support our efforts in bonding the community we organizing some bi-monthly “Enterprise 2.0 Community Luncheons” in different cities in Germany - and would like to motivate anybody who is interested in doing so elsewhere. We announced the first round of Enterprise 2.0 Community Luncheons for Hamburg, Cologne and Frankfurt on our XING group “Enterprise 2.0″.

I am happy to see anybody at one of these events - or organizing some more community bonding events elsewhere.

In an internal discussion of our Advisory Board regarding the topics of the E20 SUMMIT program Joachim Niemeier posed the question whether classical economic measures are suitable to measure and verify Enterprise 2.0 effects. Though cases like the TransUnion project (cited by Dion in his blog post on determining the ROI [cross-referencing to the post of Ross Mayfield]) give a proof of evidence for measuring the E20 effects with the classical ROI formula - many projects have difficulties in measuring it. As from the discussions about this problem at E20FORUM the main difficulties in measuring are perceived as the difficulties in identifying and quantifying the “net profit” from Enterprise 2.0 activities - as the nature of effects is mainly soft and intangible. As this is planned to be a major discussion at E20SUMMIT I would like to sort my ideas on this to stir up the discussions upfront.

In regards to a distinguished discussion I’d like to differentiate the notion of Enterprise 2.0 into two dimensions of impacts. In a recent German article for the T3N Magazin Martin and I have discussed (as already a lot of other people before) the characteristics of Web 2.0 apps and social software in comparison to classical “information management systems”. Besides mentioning the leveraging characteristics of being mainly open-source concepts with light-weighted architecture and a “simplified user experience for the masses” we focussed on Tim O’Reilly’s main point: the supplement of the social dimension and the network effects. This lead us to the point that the usage of Web 2.0 tools within the enterprise (as the notion of Enterprise 2.0) results into a more transparent and outward focussed information gathering that itself implies again a more transparent and effective collaboration. We quoted Lee Bryant at this point who is talking always about the change from a world of “content objects & processes” towards world of “feeds & flows”. So in regards to the ROI discussion we have therefore to distinguish the impact on information management & distribution within the enterprise from the impacts on collaboration.

At this point I would like to focus on the part of “information management & distribution” as this is a precondition for the impacts on collaboration and also seen as the more difficult part to measure.

Measuring the value of information management & distribution

For the further discussion I’d like to equate the term of “information distribution” to the technical dimension of “communications” - leaving out the social, emotional and intential aspects of communications. Why am I doing this? Because the “communications” discipline within the enterprise has a long time existant valuation problem which is recently addressed by “value based” approaches (see a explanation on “value based management”) that might be very suitable towards the valuation of Enterprise 2.0 effects.

At least within the German speaking PR community there is a controlling (or better KPI) model - based on the ideas of Walter K. Lindenmann and Norton/Kaplan. The latter have discussed a “strategy map“, a concept that illustrates the causes and effects on the building of business values. “The strategy map links the long-term game plan or competitive strategy of a business with its operational activities.”

In referring to this strategy map and its different “perspectives” Walter K. Lindenmann has developped a three-level KPI model for the valuation of PR effects, that constitutes the foundation of valuation for the IPR toolkit (IPR = Institute of Public Relations) as well as the German PR association (GPRA / more German background papers at CommunicationControlling.de). The model consists of three interdependent levels of impact:

1. output level: e.g. questions whether the message has reached its target group
2. outgrowth level: e.g. questions whether the message has been perceived and understood
3. outcome level: e.g. questions whether the message has changed the knowledge, opinion or behavior of the target group

As this model is not including any reference to the financial dimension of the strategy map Lothar Rolke added in article in 1997 the term “outflow” as a forth level that questions the business effects. While the GPRA is nowadays not differentiating between level 2 & 3 and therefore proclaims only a three-level model (output / outgrowth & outcome / outflow), for a further discussion on how Enterprise 2.0 is effecting the business value a differentiated four-level model would be more suitable.

The connecting pieces of these levels are the “value links” that constitute a causes and effects diagram like this example for the “value links” in communications by Mirko Lange:

I won’t translate this model as it is only a fictional examples of a value link system. Actually the causes and effects differ from industry to industry and from company to company - as the value generation differs in all kinds.

I first heard about the practice of this model in a non-PR context from the people of aexea at our Swiss Intranet Management FORUM about Intranet governance & controlling. They are using it to evaluate the effects of an Intranet project which in return resemble the targets of Enterprise 2.0 projects but mainly driven from a centralized viewpoint of organizing it.

As from the common practice of working with this model they have added a input level to the diagram that discribes the denominator of the classical ROI formula in terms of costs for the Intranet management. “Output” describes the produced content by the input - in quantity, frequency, reach & actuality, comprehensability & usability. “Outgrowth” explains the perceived messages from Intranet output - measured for example by the knowledge about the contents of the distributed messages/information. “Outcome” indicates the effects from the “outgrowth” in regards to the changed behavior in terms of participation in any Intranet services. At the top of the model “outflow” pictures the business effects of the changes in behavior.

Evaluation approach towards Enterprise 2.0 activities

Returning to the starting point I think this model is a very good approach in describing the effects of the impacts of E20 activities on the corporate “information managenet & distribution”. In contrast towards the classical ROI formula the model takes into account the “soft effects” of the activities.

In the following I put together some potential key indicators on the (for me) four main E20 activities: tagging, blogging, “wiki”-ing and “social network”-ing:

I think this little practice shows quite nicely that using a more differentiated approach to the valuation of Enterprise 2.0 is very useful as it illustrates the achievements made in an earlier stage.

• You Can’t Build a Business Case for Social Software

  Anthony Bradley of Gartner on being asked for social software metrics, how it’s difficult and what are the reasons …

  Good discussion gets triggered, ie. Sameer Patel notes that “E2.0 is a state the enterprise achieves.” and Lawrence Liu of Telligent adds that the title of Anthony’s post should rather be ““You Can’t Build a Business Case for Social Software, …Unless Unless You Can Define & Justify the Applications.”

  Snip: “There is a good reason why it is so difficult to build a generic, universal business case for social software. You can’t do it. Social software is a set of mass collaboration principles and technologies that apply to the construction of a solution, not the solution itself. Social software business value can and does vary widely from one solution to the next. Trying to build a business case for social software is similar to building a business case for a toolbox. In establishing the justification for purchasing a toolbox, you can talk only in generalities. You can build things better, faster and maybe with fewer accidents. This is the same situation when trying to justify an investment in social software. You can’t get concrete unless you know what you are building.”

  tags: enterprise2.0, roi, usage, implementation

  • You can’t do it

• What Is Execution 2.0? | The Relationship Economy……

  Jay Deragon on ACTION! …

  Snip: ”Will Management Buy Into The Plan?
  In management, the ultimate measure of performance is the metric of management effectiveness which includes execution, or how well management’s plans are carried out by members of the organization. Execution is not a singular or silo process rather it encompasses the following attributes:
  * leadership, or how effectively management communicates and translates the vision and strategy of the organization to the members
  * delegation, or how well management gives assignments and communicates instructions to members of the organization
  * return on investment, or how well management utilizes the resources (financial, physical, and human) of the organization to bring an acceptable return to shareholders
  * conflict management, or how well management is able to utilize confrontation and collaboration skills; management’s ability to be flexible and appeal to common interests.
  * motivation, how management attempts to understand the needs of others and inspires them to perform. Motivation focuses on how performance is rewarded rather than how failure is punished.
  * consideration, or how well managers seek to understand and appreciate others’ values; and not merely as a means to a business goal.”

  tags: enterprise20, implementation

• What Is Strategy 2.0?

  starting from the Cluetrain Manifesto, Jay Deragon goes on about strategy 2.0 and shortened cycles of strategic conversation - I highlighted a passage and added some notes, check them out and tell me what you think

  tags: strategy, adaptivity

• Again, What Is The ROI From Social media? | The Relationship Economy……

  addition to the RoI discussion, playing with an alternative notion of options. I like this for its focus on adaptivity, fuzzy and evolving goals et al.

  Snip: “The value of social media is counted in options - not ROI. Social media is dynamic, not static. Therefore “Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT)” are also highly dynamic moving targets that are highly contagious in social media and cannot be foretold in the next 5 days let alone 5 years. The cardinal rule of business is to collect assets and reduce liabilities. An option is an asset and an obligation is a liability.”

  tags: roi, socialmedia, enterprise20

• Web 2.0 from an ECM Perspective

  The collection of techniques and technologies known as Web 2.0 is only just beginning to have an affect on the enterprise. Join Dr. Ian Howells, Alfresco Chief Marketing Officer, and Jeff Potts, ECM Practice Lead for Optaros, as they explain the significance of these trends to the enterprise, what Web 2.0 really is and how to best leverage it to support content management strategies.

  tags: ecm, video, opensource, web20

• Determining the ROI of Enterprise 2.0 - Dion Hinchcliffe

  Given that we’re talking a lot about RoI of Enterprise 2.0 this is a concise posting by Dion Hinchcliffe (and you know there’s gotta be cute visualizations in there) making things a lot clearer for people pondering RoI et al.\n\nAnd while he’s linking to a post of mine as well - right next to Hutch Carpenter (blush …), I bookmark this especially for his point that Enterprise 2.0 usage is emergent in nature …

  tags: roi, enterprise2.0, dionhinchcliffe

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Tinkering to the future

  In Vodafone’s receiver magazine (did I tell you that I’m a happy Vodafone customer they have this piece on how the diy ethos can help build the future …

  Let’s think a bit about the connection to Enterprise 2.0 - ie. user-driven and continuous improvement, mass-involvement of employees in refining usage arenas and approaches, perpetual-beta mode of social software implementation projects, …

  tags: adaptivity, emergence, inspiration, implementation, enterprise2.0

  • In its improvisational, experimental quality, tinkering is a bit like jazz. The comparison with music can be pushed further: both are forms of human expression shaped by both specific historical forces, and deep human needs. The counterculture is one important influence on tinkering; so is computer hacking, with its casual contempt for established authority, deep respect for arcane technical skills, and refined love of imaginative jokes. The open source movement showed that hackers could create extraordinary things by co-operating on a large scale.

• McKinsey: What Matters: Internet

  some light weekend reading from McKinsey - overall I really like this site “What Matters”, tackling the real and big problems.

  Contributions by people like Clay Shirky, Craig Newmark or Yochai Benkler (who writes about peer production)

  tags: innovation, internet, collaboration

  • “Peer production”—large-scale distributed action by many individuals—is transitioning from a curiosity to a general phenomenon.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

I had a very nice surprise today when I returned to the home office, two free mags waiting in the inbox:

Yes, both are german language titles, to the left it’s t3n, published by yeebase media- a magazine that runs the tagline “Open Source & Web” (did I say that these are german language publications …), and that deals a lot with content management, web development and Web 2.0 overall. Reason for me getting an issue for free is an article Björn and me are having in this issue, on the topic of Enterprise 2.0 myths.

To the right it’s DOK. - published by good source publishing. This is a bit more heavy and (E 2.0-)industry related (tagline is “technologies, strategies & services for digital documents”) stuff, a mix of best practices reports, smart articles (like when in the current issue my friend and co-Skype-Chatter Siegfried Hirsch is writing about Enterprise RSS or when Willms Buhse is explaining Enterprise 2.0 in easy answers to tricky questions), technology stuff and even research-minded pieces. And if you wonder what entitles me to a free copy - well I guess it has to do with me meeting DOK. editor Uwe Hentschel at this year’s CeBIT, ie. specifically the E20SUMMIT dinner meetup KongressMedia organized. Social capital …

Now onto the more to come, as I am collecting and refining a lot of bookmarks in the space of Enterprise 2.0 I think it’s a good idea to share some of the better ones with you. Besides filling my regular delicious-account (things tagged Enterprise 2.0 get spliced into the enterprise2open feed already) and the regular diigo-frogpond account I installed an additional diigo account called e20summitenterprise2open, whose bookmarks will get automagically posted into this blog from now on.

Diigo is cute (yes, I learned a lot from Bertrand Duperrin in using Diigo) and offers a bit more than delicious, namely the opportunity to annotate and to expand bookmarks in a community. That said, the bookmarks posted will have some kind of short analysis (and probably highlighting and/or comments), and can also be further annotated and refined by you. And last thing to note, while certainly the topic of collaborative performance will seem to be prevalent (after all it’s the tagline for the SUMMIT), all things enterprise 2.0 might show up in the links. I guess this is no real problem, after all the bookmarks get tagged and are thus easy to digest anyway (I wonder if all my comments will be like that …).