In the wake of the Enteprise 2.0 Executive Forum, Peter-Evans Greenwood, CTO of Capgemini Australia, has written in considerably more detail on his thoughts on culture and generational change, which he and others spoke about on the final panel on the path forward.

I have a theory. It seems that most people learn something in their early to mid 20s, and then spend the rest of their career happily doing the same thing over and over again. …. Once they’ve established what it is they do they just want to keep doing it, hoping that the world will remain as it was in their early adulthood.

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If change is the driver in our organizations, but our organizations are resistant to change, then the biggest challenge we face in not technical but the strategy we use to manage change. It’s quite easy to define a technically and economically possible solution that would provide a boost to our business, or even deliver a step change in capability. But if we cannot get our organization to deliver and then adopt the solution, all our work will be for naught.

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So what does this mean for the IT department? No matter how important our success is to the success of the company as a whole, IT is a cost center; value is created at the business coal face, not in the IT department. It’s not our job to deploy the new Enterprise 2.0 solution that will revolutionize the business and then force the business to change. We need to focus on the users, rather than thinking in terms of technologies and IT assets, understand the challenges they are facing and provide them with tools and techniques that they can use to innovate themselves. IT as facilitator rather than asset manager. Or as I heard in the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum the other day, give them they structure they want and focus on managing the flow rather than trying to force them to do something a particular way.

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We’ve already had a fair bit of media coverage for Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum. Some of the media coverage includes:

Janssen-Cilag dances Enterprise 2.0 jig (Computerworld)

“Pharmaceutical giant Janssen-Cilag has overhauled its enterprise applications to introduce collaboration with a wiki that integrates IT asset management and even micro-blogging.”

Wikis may be working for Westpac (The Sheet) [Note that registration is required.]

[UPDATE: The full story is available on The Financial Standard]

“The arrival of Gail Kelly at the helm of Westpac may accelerate the bank’s adoption of “Web 2.0” tools such as blogs, wikis and social networks, allowing staff to share information freely and collaborate online.”

Exploring the future of Enterprise 2.0 (Melcrum)

“Run from 8.30am-2pm the event took place at breakneck pace, and covered a massive amount on the topic of social media and Web 2.0 in the workplace. There was much talk of knowledge and knowledge workers, easing employee frustrations, helping individuals to do their jobs more easily, differentiating to attract and retain the best talent and increasing employee engagement (yes, all of this in just 5.5 hours).”

There was also last week’s coverage of Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum:

Social networking sites help boost business: expert

“Facebook, Instant Messenger and other online networking tools aren’t mere workplace distractions — they improve the way we do business.Future Exploration Network chairman Ross Dawson says that a firm’s success increasingly hinges on its ability to share knowledge and expertise both with its employees and external clients.”

I understand there is a fair bit of media coverage yet to come – I’ll post here when I hear about it

Here are my slides for my opening presentation at Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum tomorrow. As usual, these are intended for attendees at the event, and won’t mean that much for people who aren’t there for the presentation itself.

I will write up some of the new material I cover in the presentation in subsequent posts, particularly on the governance framework. More details on some of the other content, including the lessons for Enterprise 2.0, can be found from other presentations I’ve done on The Potential of Enterprise 2.0, which was my opening keynote at the IIR Enterprise 2.0 in December, and on Successful Enterprise 2.0 and Social Media at KMWorld in Silicon Valley in November.

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A very good article in Voice and Data magazine titled Enterprise 2.0 will bring radical change in organisations covers some of the truly important issues on the topic, going beyond narrow views of the technologies to how these new approaches will change organisations. It quotes Steve Hodgkinson of Ovum extensively, including some of these nuggets:

Steve Hodgkinson, Ovum research director, sees Enterprise 2.0 as a genuine opportunity for technology to act as a catalyst for changes in organisational culture.

“Enterprise 2.0 is emerging as the most practical way of sharing and managing knowledge in a range of contexts, from team collaboration to customer self-service forums. This leads to the ability to bring about cultural change with the personal power of informal networks such as wikis, blogs, profiles and forums.”

“The root of its culture change power, however, is its ability to unleash the personal power of informal networks,” said Hodgkinson.

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Key ideas within this new system include:

* The need for a flat organisation, rather than an organisational hierarchy

* Folksonomy rather than taxonomy

* User-driven technology rather than IT department control

* Short time-to-market cycles; to continue and increase flow

* Global teams of people, rather than locating the whole organisation in one building

* Emergent information systems, rather than dictated and structured information systems

* The opening of propriety standards

Hodgkinson said: “These informal networks provide organisational peripheral vision and cut through the day-to-day nonsense, enabling more sensitive situational awareness, breakthrough thinking and access to the subtle levers of organisational change.”

“The changes are designed to increase ability, flexibility, distribution, openness and simplicity within the organisation.”

I strongly agree that these are the key issues at stake. There are lots of other great ideas to uncover in the article.

Steve spoke immediately after my keynote at the IIR Enterprise 2.0 conference last December – I wrote about some of his ideas in a summary of the event. Steve will be attending the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum this week.

On Tuesday we ran a media briefing ahead of the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum on 19 February. Someone just pointed out to me that NineMSN wrote up the story under the title Social networking sites help boost business: expert.

Since basically the whole article is direct quotes from me, I think it’s OK to put it below. It’s good to see these themes getting taken up in the media, because they really are important.

I however have to totally disclaim the last paragaph in the story, which is a major misquotation. What I in fact said is that there are far too many senior executives who are afraid of negative opinions. It takes strength and leadership to open out the organization, and many of the current crop of top executives are not showing the leadership needed for the current business and social environment.

Facebook, Instant Messenger and other online networking tools aren’t mere workplace distractions — they improve the way we do business.

Future Exploration Network chairman Ross Dawson says that a firm’s success increasingly hinges on its ability to share knowledge and expertise both with its employees and external clients.

“Organisations have always functioned like social networks,” he said.

“People are more likely to get information from the people they know well or like, or the ones they believe have the relevant expertise.”

In an era where structured repeatable processes like invoicing and recruitment are well established, the best way to differentiate firms is by their ability to network, Mr Dawson said.

Many firms already are drawn to the fluid, flexible approach to communicating offered by Web 2.0 applications such as social networking sites, blogs and virtual worlds.

“It’s about the ability to connect expertise and talent in ways which are more efficient and effective in creating value … whether that means finding new business opportunities or responding to market place changes,” he said.

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