Quick review of TEDxAdvance on Future of the Enterprise

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On Tuesday I spoke at the TEDxAdvance event in San Francisco on Future of the Enterprise.

Photo credit: Andrew Mager, magerleagues

In short, it was a great event, with close to 80 very interesting people in attendance, and excellent energy during the presentations and ensuing conversation over drinks.

I won’t replicate the fantastic write up of the event by Andrew Mager on ZDNet’s The Web Life blog – check it out for a great overview of the proceedings and some of the ideas that flowed through the evening.

A video of my presentation was taken – I hope to post it up here soon.

Which would you prefer to do your work without: email or ERP?

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I caught up with Laurie Lock Lee yesterday and we compared notes on our recent launched books – my Implementing Enterprise 2.0 and his IT Governance in a Networked World. I haven’t read his book yet but it looks great and I’ll report on it soon.

In our discussion of Enterprise 2.0 and the networked organization, Laurie observed that a minority of people inside organizations actually touch an ERP system. While it runs the basic business processes of a firm, it is essentially linear and doesn’t facilitate the networked connections and communication that support the everyday work of a knowledge-based organization.

Laurie proposed that it would be interesting to ask people in an organization which they would prefer to do without in doing their work: ERP or email. While finance types might immediately opt for the ERP system, the majority of people depend far more on email to do their jobs.

As I wrote back in 2007, we can consider that ERP is about automating processes while Enterprise 2.0 is about enabling knowledge work. While both are essential, as we shift into an increasingly networked world, facilitating connections matters more.

Which would you prefer to do without – email or ERP?

TEDxAdvance on Future of the Enterprise – San Francisco – May 5

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To further the TED conference’s mission of promoting ideas worth spreading, it has established the TEDx program of independently organized TED events.

The global Advance network is running its first TEDx event on May 5 in San Francisco, where I will speak on the future of the enterprise.

See the full invitation and registration details here.

I will be drawing on the content and ideas from my recently launched book Implementing Enterprise 2.0, but also putting this in a far broader frame of what lies ahead for organizations of all kinds.

Melissa Vaarzon-Morel of Advance Global Professionals San Francisco Committee and TEDxAdvance creator will speak about the background of the event and global networks.

Following these presentation we will have a discussion, bringing to bear the fantastic insights of:

* Verna Allee, CEO, ValueNetworks.com and author, The Future of Knowledge

* Sam Diaz, Senior Editor, CBS Interactive

The event will be held courtesy of CBS Interactive at their San Francisco offices on Second Street, with Atlassian kindly sponsoring wine and appetizers.

Click here for more information and to register. I hope to see you there!

If you can’t make it the event will be streamed live here.

About TEDxAdvance

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TED has created a program called TEDx.

TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. This event is call TEDxAdvance, where x=independently organized TED event. At the TEDxAdvance event, live speakers will spark deep discussion and connection. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events, including this one, are self-organized.

10 DOs and DONTs of organizational change

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For a recent boardroom presentation to a group of CEOs of large organizations I prepared ten ‘dos and donts’ on my topic of organizational change.

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Enterprise 2.0 Implementation Framework

I drew on the core ideas in our Implementing Enterprise 2.0 report and framework (as above). Enterprise 2.0 is ultimately far more about organizational change than technology, though it happens to be driven by web technologies. As such much of my focus today is on how to change organizations, to literally create the next version of the enterprise. Far more details on how to put the ideas below into practice are in the Implementing Enterprise 2.0 report.

My list got an extremely positive response from the audience, so I thought I’d share it here.

DOS

1. Create a vision

The most important aspect of your vision is that it must be compelling. Unless people are drawn to it and want to help create it, it is useless. This means it needs to be focused on the benefits to everyone in the organization.

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Visualization: Wikis in the enterprise

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Today we are continuing our series of visual representations of social media tools inside organizations, taken from our Implementing Enterprise 2.0 report.

The diagram below was used in the chapter on wikis in the enterprise, to illustrate how wikis can be used in organizational activities.

Go to the Implementing Enterprise 2.0 downloads page for several free chapters, including the chapter on social networking on the enterprise, with its own diagram on how social networks relate to other Enterprise 2.0 tools.

More Enterprise 2.0 visualizations coming soon.

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Intranet Innovation Awards: Submissions open

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Unfortunately posting this a bit late, but there is still time to submit your awesome intranet work to the Intranet Innovation Awards – the deadline is May 1.

The awards are run annually by StepTwo Designs, and for the last two years have featured some fantastic examples of innovation in internal web initiatives.

One of my favorites from the winners is Janssen-Cilag. Nathan Wallace, who spoke at the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum both this year and last year, shares his story in this video.

Advanced Human Technologies is an awards supporter, so we’ll be sharing more when the winners are announced later this year.

An Argument for Heterarchy: creating more effective organizational structures

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The latest issue of People and Strategy Journal has an extremely interesting Point/ Counterpoint feature. Download the full article and responses here.

Karen Stephenson, a leading network theorist and practitioner, wrote an article Neither Hierarchy nor Network: An Argument for Heterarchy, examining how heterarchies, that bring together elements of networks and hierarchies, are the most relevant organizational structures for our times.

Leading people in the field were invited to respond to the article, with responses from Edgar Schein of MIT, Robert Eccles of Harvard Business School, Charles Handy, Tracy Cox of Raytheon, Patti Anklam, Barry Frew of Center for Executive Education, Art Kleiner the editor-in-chief of Strategy+Business magazine, and Ross Dawson of Advanced Human Technologies (me :-) ).

My response is below. If you are interested in how organizational structures can be more effective in a connected world, I strongly recommend reading the full article and responses – this is an extremely topical issue.

Heterarchy: Technology, Trust and Culture

Stephenson is absolutely right to emphasize both the rapid rise in interconnection that individuals, organizations, and societies are currently experiencing, and the resulting interdependence that stems from that. Relatively few have yet grasped that the degree of interdependence generated in a global connected economy significantly changes the drivers of individual and collective success. Central to these drivers are the organizational structures that coalesce value from disparate participants.

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Telstra releases social media policy: it’s time for organizations to get their act together

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This morning’s Sydney Morning Herald displayed a prominent headline Telstra lays down the law on Twitter. The article began:

Telstra has become the first major Australian company to set down guidelines on the use of Facebook, Twitter and similar websites by its employees.

First? According to whom? As noted by Stephen Collins, the Australian Public Service Commission publicly announced protocols for online media participation in December. A number of major Australian companies have established guidelines for social media, they just didn’t issue press releases about it as Telstra has.

In any case, Telstra’s social media policy a solid document and it’s good that Telstra has both created it and released it publicly. (See the social media policy itself and the blog post launching it.) Companies that have not addressed these issues are essentially creating a liability out of what could be a strong positive for the organization.

The extensive background to the announcement (including all the fun and games of @fakestephenconroy) is given in an article on ITNews titled Telstra staff given rules on use of social networks. In the article I am quoted:

Ross Dawson, chairman of social networking analyst group Advanced Human Technologies, described Telstra’s new policy as “solid and straightforward.”

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Des Walsh video interviews at Enterprise 2.0 Part 2: Stephen Collins, Ross Dawson, Steven Noble

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Following Des Walsh’s video interviews with Chris Lampard, Jenny Williams and Peter Williams at the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum, here are three more interviews from the event with Des’s accompanying blog posts…

Stephen Collins (trib), acidlabs

Des Walsh blog post on Stephen Collins interview

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Visualization: Social bookmarking in the enterprise

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In our Implementing Enterprise 2.0 report, we created visual representations to help explain how the most important social media tools can be applied inside organizations.

The diagram below was used in the chapter on social bookmarking, which was designed to accompany the detailed coverage in the report, but it is hopefully fairly self-explanatory!

Go to the Implementing Enterprise 2.0 downloads page for several free chapters, including the chapter on social networking on the enterprise, with its own diagram on how social networks relate to other Enterprise 2.0 tools.

Please let me know your thoughts and feedback on improving these diagrams for future versions of the report. I’ll post more of these visualizations on this blog in coming weeks.

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