Read the organisation chart horizontally – not vertically

I’ve just been thrown into a project around change management for a global IT transformation project where we are changing from IBM and Lotus Notes to Microsoft and Outlook (plus a huge pile of other stuff – let’s leave it at that…) certainand a very interesting task. I could be whining about that it’s too late in the process and that too many things have been put in motion but a) whining gets you nowhere and b) the fact that communication and change management has been put on the radar is something I see as a very positive thing.

Looking through the material that has been prepared already I must admit I became quite confused. Initially I couldn’t quite put my finger on why that was. The material and plans were very professional and the content was also quite good. What about the target groups for the communication? A quick count of the identified stakeholder groups in the plans and the excellent and detailed stakeholder analysis revealed that we were looking at 30+ different stakeholder groups. Oh dear…!

I started wondering how this extreme complexity had entered the equation. Some big chunks such as “end users” and “global IT” made good sense, however, I started to notice that some groups had only a few individuals in them and that they were labeled by department names and names of committees – even names on individuals. AHA! Card sorting time! After 30 minutes of simple card sorting with the 30+ groups I got that number down to 14 – the joy of simplification!

In a perfectly flat and socially connected utopian world you would not have this problem. You’d simply communicate 100% transparent in a Yammer group or something equivalent but since we are not quite there yet in our company we will still have to work in a more traditional way. As I see it, the main challenge here is to pull people’s head out of the organizational chart. I hope that we will dare to look at the organizational chart in a different way and instead of seeing a hierarchy of responsibilities, command and control we see groups of people with different needs.

The open and transparent organization is coming – but only if we manage to see the people and the needs within rather than seeing chains of command, functional departments, and committees with dubious mandates and strange names…

Digital natives vs. Digital dinosaurs – a reflection on UX

Sometimes you get really surprised about what well known and well thought off companies get away with in their marketing material and this has prompted this short post – slightly off topic from I normally write about. I was really surprised and also appalled when I came across the following sentence in when reading some material from one of the biggest document management companies around. I quote:

“One of our highest priorities is serving the New User – the digital natives who are bringing yet another revolution to information technology. The New User wants to determine when, where, and how to interact with content and information – and on what device. The New User wants simple but powerful user experiences, tailored precisely to the needs, with all of the gears working quietly in the background.”

OK. On the surface this sounds all well and good but what if you turned a statement like this upside down? Let’s try….

Enter the Old User – The digital dinosaur – he has been working the same way for the last 20 years yet he has survived and continues to do so today. He comes to work from 9 to 5 every day – also something he has done for 20 years. He has one place and one way to interact with content and ONLY on his trusted PC. The Old User prefers complex user experiences where everybody sees the exact same information whether they need it or not and every single sub process is visible so that he knows exactly what’s happening every step of the way.

Does this guy exist – of course! He has been around for a long time and remembers when you had to work with IT systems not use IT systems to get work done. What I find particularly troubling is that some software companies still cater to the old paradigms and some times even reinforces the idea that everything was better in the good old days. In my opinion this is sad. Not that everything new is great – far from it – but if the new version is designed for the “New User” logic suggests that every version prior to that was designed for the “Old User”.

I would like nothing more than to say that this is not the case, but sadly I find it hard to do. Partly because I have seen too many systems where the focus is on the “Administrator Experience” and not the User Experience and partly because the fact that you have to use the notion of the “New user” makes me truly concerned about the product and as a potential customer I would start questioning whether this company who probably prides themselves of their innovative approach to everything is that innovative after all.

I’m happy that we are moving in a more user friendly direction but every time a software vendor takes the “digital natives” hostage – verbally that is – to justify an improvement the user experience or to introduce “social”, an incredibly cute kitten dies. They’re missing the point! The “user experience” should be the starting point for everything……. or did I miss something here?

The conference season is upon us

November may be one of dullest months of the year – especially in Scandinavia! Luckily some great people make this month much more interesting by hosting a number of conferences every year in November. This year I will be fortunate enough to attend two as a speaker – J. Boye 2012 in Aarhus and Intranett 2012 in Oslo.

First up is what I affectionately call “my local conference” and I have written a little about what I am looking forward to at this particular event. I hope that I will see you there!

Here’s a little exerpt of the post and a link where you can read more.

Apart from giving my own presentation as a part of the intranet conference track, I have also been given the opportunity to host a roundtable about social networking and the intranet. This provides an opportunity not only to share some of my own experiences but also to learn from others what works and what doesn’t – a great way to share in a more informal setting and hopefully get some ideas that can be used when you get back from the conference.

Read the entire post at the J. Boye Conference site…

COPE with BYOD – Motivators and the impact of Cloud

Spurred on by an article about devices as Corporately Owned Personally Enabled – or COPE for short – as an alternative to Bring Your Own Device, I had a – by Twitter standards – lengthy dialogue with Chris Tubb about the motivators for BYOD. This post is a follow-up to one of my recent posts and also a summary of my own thoughts during my dialogue with Chris.

The basic idea of COPE is that the company that has provided you with a device (e.g. a laptop) to get your work done. Instead of enforcing harsh restrictions on what you can install and what you can use the device for, you are allowed to install software and use it for the purposes that you deem fit – within reason. The big question is whether this is a real alternative to a potentially very costly BYOD strategy.

In my experience people’s needs for using their own devices for work purposes comes in three different disguises. All three are valid motivators but what I find interesting is the underlying reasons and with the idea of COPE, you also have an alternative.

1) Power and Capability
Your work device is less capable when it comes to speed and availability of software than what you are used to at home. This means that you feel less productive at work which increases your frustration. A personally enabled (COPE) device is not likely to solve this as it will STILL be the corporately sanctioned equipment.

Bringing your own device will help as this is the root cause of your frustration – you just know that you can do better. If I were to play devil’s advocate here, I would say that it is your employer’s responsibility to make sure that it is not technology that makes you less productive and if they provide inferior equipment, they must also accept inferior productivity.

2) Mobility and The Digital Workplace
Your job allows you to work from anywhere at any time. The problem is that you find the corporate devices limiting as they don’t fully support this and you will have to bring more than one device in order to take care of your personal stuff. In other words, if you are working with the digital workplace and aim to create a more coherent solution for your company, this ought to be interesting for you.

COPE fits perfectly in this scenario. I have a corporate device – I have access to tech support when I need it AND I can even use the device for what I need when I need it. Bring my own device? Why should I…?

3) Vanity and Status
Hardly a primary motivator for bringing own devices, but some undoubtedly find it very motivating to be able to flash the latest Android phone or the new iPad. COPE will not solve this as companies (almost) never will be able to provide the cutting edge stuff. BYOD is a potential solution, but also potentially VERY expensive for companies.

Either way, I see these motivators as largely extrinsic – comparable to a pay raise. It will provide a short term motivation boost but the most important long term aspect will be the intrinsic motivators i.e. your job. No amount of gadgets can make up for poor job design.

So both BYOD and COPE may work? Yes, but is this the real issue? In my job I work with creating a digital workplace that is available when and where you need it. I can’t help but think that in 10 years’ time when most things have moved to the cloud, we will look back at the BYOD discussion and wonder what the fuss was all about. Moving to the cloud simply took care of all these things by making everything accessible through a browser. Dare I mention that this has been possible for years by using a Citrix solution?

In the end this has nothing to do with devices it is all about creating a consistent and SECURE access to company assets that will allow you to use them from anywhere and from any device which makes it very important that companies carefully evaluate the motivators for BYOD/COPE in the organization and decide on a (potentially costly) path forward. Right now we are just in a situation where the road ahead is not obvious but waiting at the intersection for the light to change is just not an option.

Smarter business in the year 2012 – also on paper…

I have attended a fair share of conferences and event – some good, some bad. One thing that always makes me a little apprehensive is when the big vendors invite to the big annual events. It’s always a good chance to see all the new stuff in action but more often than not they roll out the red carpet and present a ‘Big Mac’ event. Big Mac in the sense that it’s beautifully presented but leaves few lasting impressions other than you are hungry again two hours later.

This morning I boarded the train from Aarhus at 05.42 with a slight apprehension and when I entered the beautiful venue 3½ hours later it was reinforced by the fact that it turned out to be a HUGE event. I don’t know what I had expected but a crowd of 1000+ delegates was certainly not it!

At the time of writing this I am on my way home from what ended up being one of the best events of its kind that I have attended for a long time. It would be a shame to say that my world was turned upside down but it was very refreshing to hear how IBM works with social business externally. Susan Emerick explained how everyone in IBM has the opportunity to participate on social platforms but also how they identify talent and resource people internally and make their participation an important part of their strategic go to market initiatives.

One of their very important conclusions was that the ‘digital engagement’ was 3 times more effective than the traditional digital marketing. I spoke to Susan afterwards where she reiterated this point – find an applicable area where you are likely to create new business opportunities – dedicate a portion of your budget to the new initiative – and compare…

The comparison obviously requires measurement. Measurement inevitably categorises content (and even people) as good or bad in terms of their digital efforts. In my opinion, this will become an inconvenient truth for many people in the social business. If you listen to many experts in this area they are advocating various pseudo-metrics related to how engaging you are but in the end it all boils down to what can be documented on the bottom line……or as Jerry McGuire would say – uhm, well, shout – SHOW ME THE MONEY!!

The Swedish Chef in action (photo by @unwiredchris)

However, the main topic for the social business track remained the challenges of creating an organization where the people and the culture embrace the value of sharing information and knowledge openly. Until this change is brought about it makes little sense to talk

about business opportunities in stead we need to focus our energy on getting the right mix of ingredients that make up a proper social business and this both begins and ends with cultural change – or to paraphrase ‘the Swedish chef’ Christian Carlsson who introduced the metaphor of social business components as ingredients in a bread:

“Culture is the yeast that makes a social business rise”

Enough about food….. What about the paper mentioned in the header? Well, I was not the only one who was surprised when all participants was reminded to fill out the evaluation form and hand it in before we left. I couldn’t help but to ask if that was what IBM defined as “smarter business” but as it turned out, they had learned that online forms were not nearly as effective for gathering feedback. Agree or disagree, if that’s the case then a piece of paper CAN be a smarter way – also in our hyper-connected world.

3 different takes + 1 opinion about BYOD

Lots of people – also internally in my organization – talk about bringing own devices to work (BYOD). On one side in some ways it is easier for companies – and me – to let me to bring my own cool gizmos that I know inside out instead of having to stay on the cutting edge. On the other side companies ought to provide the tools that enable you to get your work done and it must work sufficiently fast, reliable, and most important sufficiently supported. This will not be the latest candy-themed Android OS or the newest iPhone, but it still gets the job done.

Personally I’m not quite sure where I stand on the topic but three BYOD themed articles/blogsposts have caught my attention today – each offering a different view on the BYOD debate. I will share them here along with a few of my thoughts.

The user perspective
“What’s my motivation? A mental model for BYOD” is a great post about how people have different motivations for wanting to bring their own devices to work. A very good starting point for a discussion as I have experienced that the BYOD talks quickly evolves into an arms race about features and specs – not about the underlying problem itself and this is in my opinion where you need to start.

The management perspective
The header “When BYOD Is a Productivity Killer” almost says it all and it did make me a little apprehensive. It turned out to be about how using your own device will make work seem more pervasive thus making it easier to switch off. The concluding sentence “Essentially, BYOD eliminates the free work that employees with corporate phones were doing.” makes me question if the author has understood the basic BYOD concept at all.

The bigger perspectives
Gartner offers a bigger picture and I have to say that I agree completely with their statement that “BYOD is not for every company, or every employee…..For the vast majority of companies it is not possible to force all users into a bring your own (BYO) program without substantial financial investments — and considerable support from senior management. It’s hardly revolutionary but there are some valid points and I believe that this is how we will see this trend play out.

Where does that leave me? Have I gotten any closer to form an opinion on BYOD? I’m not sure that this is about devices at all. It’s more about how work becomes more independent of time and place. Productivity and purpose will determine how and if BYOD will apply to your situation. One thing that’s 100% safe to say is that if BYOD is about “free work” – heck, if your company is even considering such a thing as “Free work”, no amount of gadgets will solve that. It’s about trust and respect and this truly IS the most important foundation stone of any BYOD initiative.

4 years on Twitter – and why the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

Today – almost this very minute – it is 4 years since I wrote my first post on Twitter. Now that I think of it and compare it to how much I have gained from using Twitter, I wish that I had written something a bit more profound and heartfelt.The question from Twitter back then was: “What are you doing right now?”- and the answer:

A little more time was spent dabbling around I went into hibernation for about a year until the buzz picked up again. My conclusion (and my 5th tweet) after a little reading, research, and a few experiments… Oh. The irony….

Luckily I now had two colleagues @lizzygreatfarm and @signalize who shared my rekindled interest. I quickly decided on two principles: Tweet in English + Stick as strictly as possible to professional content (intranets, social media, digital workplace), and the result is that today Twitter has become my number one source for professional news and updates.

So what have I learned after 4 years, and why have I found out that Twitter is NOT a waste of time?

1) Nothing beats learning by doing
Get in there, don’t stand on the sideline and be prepared to give It a little more time than you would expect. Whatever you do don’t be afraid to experiment – you often learn more from your mistakes than from your successes.

2) Twitter is a little like dating
…but from a professional point-of-view. You start by following someone and one day you might just find yourself in the same room as one of ‘your’ tweeps. When it comes to networking connecting in real life makes so much more sense when you have had some meaningful contact before you actually meet.

3) Stay in touch and extend the discussions
If you, like me, attend some conferences or other professional events throughout the year Twitter is unparalleled for staying in touch. LinkedIn can be used for keeping track of who you meet, but I consider it like a virtual rolodex. Twitter is so much more vibrant and provides a great basis for dialogue – there’s not much dialogue in an online business card.

So what are the negatives of using Twitter today? Well, to be honest I think that I now know exactly when and for what I use Twitter so for me, personally, I don’t really see any downsides. No doubt that Twitter will remain an important tool for my personal-professional news and network in the time to come………and in case you wonder: Yes. The apple pie was a great pudding that day!

The intranet vs. The digital workplace

In November I was in Stockholm for Intranätdagarna 2011:2 (The Intranet Days 2011:2) and during my two-day visit to the Swedish capital, I had the pleasure of talking to Paul Miller from Intranet Benchmarking Forum. Among other things we spent some time talking about the proclaimed death of intranets which I believe is greatly exaggerated.

Since then I have started at my third intranet related job at a new company and this has given me an opportunity to get a closer look behind the scenes of an intranet that has remained largely unchanged for an impressive 10 years. This also allows for a rather unique perspective on how the very traditional intranet fits in the online landscape of 2012.

In 2002 online was equal to websites and maybe also an intranet if your company had realized that there was a need for an internal website. This was for communication, information, forms, and selected documents. Self-contained with no integrations since there was nothing to integrate!

Somewhere along the way other systems came about and slowly they started to nudge into the online realm offering more and more advanced portal functionality and taking over functionality from the intranet. Big investments were made and in some companies this was at the expense of the intranet because it did a great job at publishing news and forms. This means that we now have a landscape of many portals or portal-like functions. Many of which would fit snugly on the intranet and this poses the question: What to use where and when?

The process leading up to this has been that of evolution. The solutions have developed in relative isolation, but the needs that they serve are largely the same and this is where the notion of the digital workplace comes into play. We have a landscape of monoliths where some are grouped closer together than others and if the intranet does nothing that publish news and provide a phonebook, it doesn’t take much imagination to declare the death of intranets and that the remaining

This puts the intranet in a quite unique position: You can argue that the intranet doesn’t serve a business purpose and that it should die, but you can also argue that the intranet is the independent alternative that can form the mortar between all the monoliths out there and this is the big challenge for intranets and intranet managers of today: How do you bridge these gaps between the components of the digital workplace?

Evolve or die!
Intranets and their managers are faced with an exciting challenge regardless whether you use state-of-the-art portals or of you have a homegrown HTML site: How do you connect all these vital pillars of the digital workplace to form a strong intranet that serves as a single point of access?

The notion of creating an intranet that contains everything is that of 2002. Today’s intranet will be a thin layer on top of a number of other highly specialized tools to form a ‘Patchwork Intranet‘ or ‘Heterogeneous Intranet‘. This layer may provide some core functions like news, and possibly the social dimension, but most importantly it is a layer that gives you access to what you need while hiding the underlying complexity.

“Digital workplace” and “Intranet” are not interchangeable and also not contradictions. The intranet is an integral – possibly the most important – part of the digital workplace of the future. The intranet is not dead, but if you fail to realize this potential, you’d better brush up on your life saving skills

Klout – a full time job?

I have been a little intreagued by services like Klout that try to measure your ‘social value’. However, after a 3 day weekend I came back and checked Klout and this is what I saw:

Did I become significantly less influential because I wasn’t there for 3 days? I don’t think so! If I had abandoned the web for a month or two, I would have believed it, but 3 days?!?

I like the notion of having some sort of credibility score, but this is just no good.

Microblogging – The sound of inevitability…

(Ok. The header may be a little over the top….)

As a long time Twitter user, I strongly believe in the power of microblogging. Twitter has enabled me to build an international network with other online pros who provide excellent daily insights for which I am very thankful. I am not claiming to be an evangelist and sing the 140-character praise at every given moment – all I am saying it that I derive a great deal of value from it. And so do others.

A couple of days ago I read this article about how schools and universities have started taking to Yammer. I would not say that this comes as a surprise to me, but it hadn’t occurred to me that it could be valuable here as well since they’re all on Facebook? Right?

Yammer Trumps Facebook for Some Graduate Students

On second thought I immediately started thinking about the implications of this. Today, many companies struggle with the internal social dimension – my own included – and most initiatives are on grassroot level, or at least they have started there. The reason for this struggle comes in many forms and shapes and unfortunately one of these is the Y shape – Why?

Although a good question indeed, and although there is no a single answer, you’d better get on with answering that question if you want to keep up the pace. People like the author of this and the likes of him may have been banging on about this for a long time, but has failed to provide a proper ROI or business case, but the fact is that this is not a clever, flavor of the month idea – this comes from outside. From the web. From the services that people use and find useful. They want to be able to have something similar ‘inside the firewall’ as well.

The best example I can think of is Enterprise search vs. Google. I acknowledge that finding reliable information easily is paramount in any organisation, but with the ascent of Google, the focus on finding information has increased vastly. People today google everything, and they expect to be able to do the same when they are at work. We are leaving the requirements for enterprise search alone here, but I think that it is safe to say that people are not going to be satisfied before they have a Google-like experience at work too. This is not because people have become more demanding – they have just seen an extremely good solution AND it is available for them at home, so why can’t we have Google at work?

Same thing goes for collaborative services like Yammer, SocialCast, etc. People are used to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Xing, etc. from home and now they expect something similar at work. Add to that a generation who will be more and more familiar with these types of services from schools and universities entering the companies. Something is going to happen.

It will not happen over night, but I do find a great deal of comfort in the fact that this change will happen whether we want it or not, and I can’t help but think of a quote from the movie ‘The Matrix’: “Do you hear that Mr. Anderson?… That is the sound of inevitability…”