Information is King, not apps or technology or infrastructure. They are all servants. As knowledge workers it is the information that we need and that we work on (together).

Why is it necessary to stress this? What does it mean?
If information was king, we would not for instance had to start an application to view or enter information. It’s the vendors that think this way, because they sell applications. If information was king, the main focus would not to be to create an environment to run apps effectively, but rather create a holistic information gathering and working environment. The portals would not have frames for document libraries, picture libraries,  business apps, conversations and so on. No we would have frames for case1, case2, case3, etc. that I’m working on with all information linked in to that case.

And when we talk about information, we often need bits of information linked in – this paragraph of the report, rather than the whole report and so on. (see principle 2 in Dion Hinchcliffe’s The Web-Oriented Architecture (WOA) Unmanifesto).

The same goes for functionality – we often need bits of functionality, not whole apps. So we have a cloud where we shop for functionality and the cloud delivers that without claiming ownership or host-ship to our data.

We combine bits of information and bits of functionality to produce the desired (business) output

What stops us from achieving this kind of environment and delivery model? Why can’t we as consumers demand this approach. As we see increased consumer power in the public market and web, so it could also be for business consumers. The vendor that think and delivers like this will win.

It is to bring forward the legacy of information pioneers like Vannevar Bush, (Associative linking), Doug Engelbart (Support the needs of high performance, problem solving teams, Augmenting a team’s collective IQ. ),  Tim Berners-Lee (The World of Linked Data).

Getting a new gadget or app is exciting, but when you go to the hardware store to buy a new drill, it’s the hole you want really, not the drill. However you can not buy the hole in the hardware store, but you could buy the service of some work men to deliver the hole to you. Similarly in the world of computing and with the right cloud delivery model,  we can in fact buy the hole in stead of the drill.

See related posts:

• Productivity
• Effective communications
• Talking together systems – wishlist
• Common Understanding
• Great Communications
• To make the knowledge worker productive

Key verbs or functional factors here are: Communication, Interactivity, Connectivity and a more comprehensive information management.

There are also two obvious angles: External focus and Internal focus. Most of my posts have had the internal focus – how Web2.0 can increase/improve internal business functions. While most social media discussions have had the external focus – how businesses can utilize typical Web2.0 tools like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the dynamics of the social web.

What does all this enables the businesses to do? How can they increase their capabilities, aso? Much have been written/said about this. My early post: Why should we Enterprise 2.0 ourselves? was the start of some internal benefits. We will broaden this and include both the internal and external perspective with the basis in Communication and information management as the functional elements.  Interactivity and connectivity are included in the communication scope.

1.0 Communication

How does 2.0 give us increased communication capabilities? What does increased communication capabilities enable us to do? Which concrete business needs does it meet? How will it help us externally? How will it help us internally?

1.1 External Communication

This means utilizing public social media tools to improve/increase capabilities and meet customers or other externals in their environment and familiar communities.  Communication with partners will be treated in a separate section as it entails more integrated communication.

This includes communication with the following to meet/increase the following business needs:

• Market – potential customers/clients
• to get more customers
• Customers   (B2C)
• to inform
• to support
• to improve relationship
• all of this to get continuous or increased sale

1.2  Internal Communication

Applying the tools and mindset now available on the Internet’s Social Network arena in the Enterprise in a dynamic collaborative way has been the focus of most of my  posts on Enterprise 2.0 and the collaborative workspace. More recently the posts: Great Communications and To make the knowledge worker productive focuses on how Web2.0 can increase the internal communication spectrum and simplify information handling (tool independent) to increase the productivity and effectiveness of the knowledge worker – “the most valuable asset of a 21st century institution” according to Peter Drücker. And as mentioned earlier the post Why should we Enterprise 2.0 ourselves? lists some internal benefits. To summarize business benefits:

• more effective knowledge workers means the organization will produce more in less time
• a more connected, functional, responsive mechanism to early detect and respond to problems, threats and opportunities
• a perfect environment and tool set for the Lean organization.
• comprehensive communication – can utilize a broader communication spectrum (asynchronous, synchronous, physical, digital) how these ways of communication can complement each other to work more effectively (see:  Great Communications  post and animated illustration
• integrated information handling across organizational borders (the case or information is the issue, not the line of command)

1.3  Combined Communication  (B2B, B2C)

Communication with partners and to some degree customers may mean to absorb some of these tools and technologies in the companies infrastructure spectrum. So we talk about integrated communication, but also integrated information. Meaning for example from a business stand point, there’s no reason why a communication/conversation with a customer or partner and the internal conversations this spurs should be two different entities/streams. It is concerning the same issue or case and should be kept together. It is the 2.0 system’s responsibility to present different views or parts of this conversation according to user communities and access rights.  2.0 systems and tool sets allow us to have these integrated conversations and information handling while preserving integrity (meaning no non-concerning or comapny internal information will be disclosed externally).  This increased communication capabilities with partners will enable businesses to:

• enable Lean capabilities – just in time deliveries
• detect deficiencies and potential problems at an early stage
• increase capabilities of partner teams – combined B2B teams

If Peter Drücker‘s classic statement holds true, then one of the most important achievements a company can do is to make the knowledge worker truly effective. It is as important as getting this ERP system or this CRM system up and running or upgraded, and are worthy of equal investments.

So if we go straight to the knowledge worker, what does she need? Think fresh, think anew. Forget history and all systems abound.

OK, now you and I, we are knowledge workers, what do we do, what do we work with, what kind of tools/environment would make us effective?

We work on a couple of cases/projects. We have been assigned specific tasks. It’s the case we are working on that is the focus.

What do we need to work on this case? What tools, what environments, which connections, which data, ….?

What do we do today? We make phone calls, we call for meetings, we write agendas, we meet, we take notes, we write reports, we have email exchanges, we chat, we even have video or phone conferences.

What’s wrong with this picture from a knowledge worker’s standpoint? See, the case is not the focal point anymore. It is not well treated. The applications and tools becomes the focal points. And the whole thing is too disconnected. We try to use a document sharing system, but the story is more than just documents. And the tools we use are not really made for collaborative work (see Talking together systems – wishlist).

Let’s make the case be the focal point. Let the knowledge worker be effective in working with the case. Let everything circle around this case. The case connects to necessary resources. Everything is linked in in one connected container. It is not dispersed in different tools. The tools we work with are made for collaborative efforts, because that’s what we need to do to solve effectively, we need to work with others and produce together in the electronic tool-set.

The disconnected, application-centered, non-collaborative world of Enterprise 1.0 is not really an effective knowledge worker’s workspace – the connected, information-centered world of Enterprise 2.0 is a much better one.

In the old world we struggle too much with baggage and history;  applications being the focus and thus complicated client environment configurations, the old typewriter metaphor – how will this document look when printed, we can’t really refer to or work on individual information items within dosuments, etc. In the new world we use simple web protocols/technology and what the web was made for;  collaboration – connecting data, connecting people. Conversations and conversational data are important resources – synchronous, but mostly asynchronous meetings/conversations that go on all the time. We don’t need to start an application to find, view or enter information. It’s all right there in the collaborative space, just a click away, browser/HTML based. The focus is on the content and how to collaboratively develop content and collective intelligence. Content first – we don’t worry about how the document looks or formats for print-out, that is taken care of automatically. We can refer to and work on specific information items, which may be just a paragraph or a question within a context, etc.

If the attributes of a knowledge worker are truly valued and recognized as a main asset in the company’s value stream, then everything will be done to make her as productive as possible. We will analyze her situation, what make her effective, what hampers her productiveness? We will use Lean methods to eliminate waste that hamper her productiveness. We will think like SCRUM and appoint a SCRUM Master with the authority to protect the SCRUM team of knowledge workers so they can be as effective as possible. And we will invest in systems and environments that make the knowledge worker truly effective.  For example:

• As knowledge workers we don’t really need to go into the ERP system ( or CRM or whatever). We need data from it yes and we might need to enter data, but that should be from the case via a standard interface – we deliver to that interface and we query that interface and it’s all reachable as part of the knowledge worker’s collaborative space, ie using web technology (HTML, REST …).
• We don’t really need “Portals” in its traditional sense either to be effective. A portal is a “port” to something – to what? Something higher, more important? But the case I’m working on now is the important thing. I might need corporate resources, yes. But let me just pull them in myself and they become part of this case’s information container.

But management need to inform about important company stuff. Right. I choose to follow my boss or the management stream. The company trust their knowledge workers. It’s their responsibility to stay informed. We work like self-managed SCRUM teams. It’s the SCRUM Master’s (ie. Management’s) responsibility to protect the team so it can stay productive. We assume everybody take responsibility; the knowledge worker, management, everybody – and the SCRUM team has the authority to eject members who don’t take that responsibility.

Examples:

• Of management thinking/model:  Creating a culture of innovation
• Of systems that bring it all together:
• Keep a common thread around the matter across team/access boundaries – even extending outside company –> see this analysis by Michael Sampson
• Conversational data is a very important part of the whole matter around a case. Many times it is necessary to have those data to make full value of a document or report –> see the video example in The value of what you write and the value of conversational data

What is Great Communications? How do we achieve it? And what will it do for business?

This post is about how physical and digital human communications can complement each other.  By utilizing latest web2.0  developments, we are in fact able to mirror more closely how humans communicate physically into the digital space, which gives us some interesting new possibilities.

Peter O’Kelly of Burton Group introduced in 2006 the idea of how interactive, compound documents will replace the print-centric documents we’re used to. He argues that this is simply ….

……. a better form-follows-function fit (than print-centric approaches) for the way people actually think and work. Compound documents facilitate focusing more on information work than on disparate technologies and tools, and foster more effective content management. Interactive document models are used to automatically and unobtrusively offer supplemental resources and actions in context, providing opportunities to more effectively leverage tools and metadata without disruptive context shifts.

What type of human communications do we have?

View this illustration.  We have:

Synchronous communication: All communicators present at the same time. When synchronous communication is in the physical space all human senses (see, hear, smell, body language, etc.) may be utilized for communication purposes. All have to be present in the same room which may require traveling. It also requires synchronous agendas/schedules. Video conferencing can alleviate traveling to the expense of poorer human sense utilization. Telephone calls and chats are usually ad-hoc, non-scheduled one-to-one communications. Telephone calls utilize the hearing sense to a degree. Chats may be recorded for later reference. For all synchronous communication the moment of communication is NOW, all exchanges and expressions have to be in the moment of the meeting, any other communication has to wait for the next meeting.

Asynchronous communication: Communicators are not present at the same time. Can give communicator more time to consider right responses. No need for synchronized time schedules. Notice, there are no alternatives for asynchronous communication in the physical space.  This is the quadrant where indeed digital communication can improve/complement physical communication.  And as Peter O’Kelly says, it is only now in the Web2.0 era, when true interactive spaces are available that we can achieve real asynchronous communication.

In fact with this type of communication we can achieve a more comprehensive information management, where digital abilities will improve physical communication and we can record and gather all information and communications  pertaining to a case in one connected container – that is all documents, all illustrations, all data, all conversations, related people involved , and so on.

(Up until now the majority of asynchronous communication have been carried out in “email conversations”, which is unfortunate since “… email is neither a suitable container nor carrier of information – it was never designed for that purpose, even though it is (mis-)used that way …” and left us with a bit of an Information Management chaos – see Information – some guiding principles and definitions that states: “There is no need to carry information only reference it.” Now we have the means to treat this information the right way.)

The way in which digital conversations can mirror/improve/compliment physical conversation – some possible benefits are listed at the end of  Common Understanding. Why don’t you try it yourself, to see how it works. Then you can add to the list as you discover more benefits ….

Welcome to the world of Great Communications

See related posts:

Common Understanding

Talking together systems – wishlist

Incentives to share – stay connected

Effective communications

Productivity

The Preface of the book reads: “Business is more personal than most people admit. In fact let’s just get it out in the open right away; business is personal. And in spite of all effort we’ve put into making it impersonal, objective and stripped of emotions, business still is and always will remain a hearty matter”.

I’m deeply interested in all research, science and theories on how humans communicate, how we converse or talk together, how we influence and how we achieve common understanding. It’s imperative in business as in any society of humans.

I’ve touched on the subject of Effective communications to achieve increased Productivity utilizing good digital Talking together tools. This also calls for a focus on  the value of conversational data , and taking good care of them. While I don’t believe we can achieve such advanced level of communication and connection in digital conversations as we can in physical and visual conversations, I’m intrigued how these two forms of communication can complement and improve each other, and would like to explore this further.

In line with the book’s thinking, business has (can) advanced to realize the importance of Social Process Reengineering to complement/improve Business Process Reengineering (BPR). In later years Business Process Management (BPM) has gained major support, but BPM is now accused of focusing on technology and disregarding the people aspects of change. This is a golden opportunity. We can now design a social or connected enterprise into the more rigid BPM regime, standing a better chance of creating a model closer to the real world scenario.

I’m sure there’s ample research on this subject and will search for it and welcome any tips/input from you.

In parenthesis – while tools are not primary in this process, I still feel the need (due to vendors claiming to deliver E2.0 tools that are not Enterprise 2.0 environments or only partly there) to stress the use of proper/whole/mature Enterprise 2.0 tools that treat conversational data and the conversational process the right way. This goes beyond the basic use of blogs and wikis and comments. You have to achieve proper collective intelligence development.

The rest of this post might seem like an anti-climax, for I will just list some (that might seem trivial) points from my experience of digital conversations, the pleasantness of them, what could be their advantages and the way it could compliment, improve and prepare physical conversations and meetings. I dealt with this partly in Talking together systems – wishlist and Effective communications.  To make it clear, we talk here about asynchronous conversations first of all (ie. not chat or video calls, etc.). Again I would stress the importance of proper tools, both to make the conversational process pleasant and to value conversational data (proper treatment of them). Also with proper conversational tools we stand a better chance of mirroring physical communication into the digital world, which is always a good design criteria for success.

The way digital conversation can mirror/improve/compliment physical conversation:

• schedule-independent meetings (no need to find synchronized time slots for meetings)
• time to think when formulating a thought/idea
• time to think when formulating a comment/response
• you can edit/redo/improve your own words
• you can even converse/comment with yourself  (see some examples/clips below)
• collaboratively developing ideas/intelligence – it’s an emerging process
• ask questions is a good form of communication – urge you to listen
• you can choose to (listen)/read properly before you answer
• you can talk/write when the thoughts come to you – physical meetings/conversations get the thoughts/ideas you have at that moment which are never complete.
• The physical meeting is just an extension of the electronic meeting place going on all the time –> see this interview with Stewart Mader – author of “Wikipatterns“
• there’s more points here – be my guest – you get the idea…?

Illustrations of digital conversations/developments:

People are used to talk together in Web2.0 tools like Facebook and Twitter, and FB, Twitter look-likes are creeping into the organizations on an ad-hoc basis, without really considering the impact,  big-picture or wider requirements (f.ex organizational and information management impact). Another consideration is how the consumer/private/social directed Web2.0 fits the corporate paradigm (see: “Why There Is No Facebook For The Enterprise“). That’s why an Enterprise 2.0 (applying web2.0 in the Enterprise) environment should be defined which is not just a copy of the Web2.0 environment (albeit we can learn from each other).

Conversational Data (CD) – talking-together-data is going to be or are already huge. Why? Because emails, chats, phone calls, meetings (formal/informal) are huge. Of course it’s huge, that’s what we do – communicate, without it there’s no organization. Now we are taking this serious , taking active and conscious actions as to how do we handle this wast resource of information – the collective intelligence asset, in a way that meet business objectives and make the knowledge worker within the organization  truly effective. We are going from people living in emails, meetings (-inflation)  and the like, to people living in the collaborative space with effective on-line conversations/meetings and all information about a case gathered in one place. We are talking about Effective communications   to increase the Productivity.

Before we move on, let’s define or talk about a term Intelligence Asset Development (IAD). It is the development of the combined intelligence asset of the organization. We use this term in stead of knowledge management to signify a dynamic, brain-combining, ever-expanding entity, which is the basis of any developing organism. (see: Developing intelligence in the Enterprise 2.0 world)

The organization and the people in it needs this kind of environment for IAD. We have now the unfortunate situation that we need it, but we have not designed an environment for it, and people use the tools at hand, which are not ideal or necessarily created for this purpose. Email is misused as an information carrier and store – doing havoc on the information asset (disperse, split, fragment in stead of gather) – see Information – some guiding principles and definitions – “information should never be carried, only referenced (kept in one place)”.  Word documents were never made for collaborative content development. Blogs were made for diary entries and does not allow in-line commenting for enhancing/developing points within the blog in a rich-edit environment (the blogger and the commenter are equal). Micro-Blogs (Twitter) were made for status updates, and does not allow for elaborate intelligence development, and so on.

No, what we need is a combination of blogs, FB, micro-blogs, wikis, discussions and more. Let’s start to define it:

1. These talking-together textual data are treated like information items – can be referenced automatically (does have an URL link) down to paragraph level
2. These information items do also carry their own access rights, meaning a conversation could contain more for one person than for another depending on access rights, but nevertheless it’s all kept in one container.
3. All entries (posts, comments to posts) are treated equal, with the same degree of rich-edit environment and importance (because people and their contributions are regarded equal)
4. In-line commenting is a given (with rich-edit), to enhance certain points and carry out sensible intelligence development
5. It’s just as important following (getting informed about)  a case as following a person
6. All our entries (questions, answers, articles, updates, comments, …) shows in an Activity stream
7. Cross-space dynamic views (streams) of these data are easily accomplished.
8. Presentation/Finds of data on tags, people, time, creators, contributors, content, type of activity, etc.
9. …….

This short presentation “Staying connected ….” claims that when people are connected and do their work in the collaborative space, then sharing/collaboration is inherent in their work – there’s no need to reward, push or pull to collaborate – it’s what they do all the time. It is because most of us are in the partly connected Enterprise 1.0 or semi-Enterprise 2.0 environment that sharing needs coaching, rewarding, pushing – because it’s a side activity and not part of the real work we do.

3 scenarios for staying connected (.. to share and collaborate ..)

1. Most knowledge work is done in Oulook and MSO  (Enterprise 1.0)
2. As in 1, but (if time / motivation) do some sharing in (micro)Blogs and comments  (Enterpise 1.5)
3. Living in the collaborative space in a totally connected environment  (Enterprise 2.0)

What do you think?

May I also reference Enterprise 2.0 advisor Jordan Frank’s blog: Need for Incentives, and other Innovation Myths , which also points to Enterprise 2.0 practitioner Brian Tullis blog Whats the Vis. mentioning the fact that making your work observable, visible is in itself a main intrinsic motivator (for sharing). You know you are doing valuable work / contribution and it is visible so everybody else knows as well, including the ones you report to, dimishing the need for seperate status reports/meetings.

See also:    McKinsey Report: “The rise of the networked enterprise: Web 2.0 finds its payday“

To use a model where the digital space most closely mirror or resemble the physical space of communication, would be the right approach. Then the capabilities of the digital space can also be used to improve what can be achieved by physical communication.

The capability of the collaborative space is such that communication can be designed to work one way or two-ways, restricted or un-restricted, with different degrees of interactivity as best meets business needs. In it lays also the capability of extending the communication scope to cater for more involvement from user communities, feedbacks, knowledge capture, innovation initiatives, case development and follow-ups, exception handling, develop best practices, task management, project handling, etc.

Some features of the collaborative space are mentioned here, which will serve as the foundation for the core communication functionality. Presenting the user/role with the right communication/information is a given.

Clicking on the images to the left here will expand on some principles serving as a model for the collaborative space.  The mantra is connecting people, connecting data (and systems). We connect to data and people that are applicable to what we are working on at the moment. Data are both informal conversational data and formal business data accessed via SOA links. It is important to note that informal conversational data now gain a higher valued status, just as high as formal documents, etc.; we need to catch the conversation and history behind a document/report and thus a good host for conversational data – see The value of what you write and the value of conversational data)

The connectedness of things is imparative utilizing WOA/SOA architecture to drive the delivery/dynamics of data. (see: A highly connected, functional and responsive mechanism and Simplify Client Configuration and Data Access)

As mentioned in Productivity, good, simple and mature hypertext engines are available to drive this collaboration and communication space. And it’s better to use this targeted type of software, than applying some traditional software that follows the old paradigm.

.

When you achieve a clean and effective work surface for communication and collaboration (as outlined in this post and the Productivity post), a lot of work done in traditional personal productivity tools like MS Office , emails will be significantly reduced , and thus reducing the cost of each IT workplace and the need for support.

OK, I’m ready to try this Enterprise 2.0 stuff and work in this collaborative space, but I’m confused. There’s so many new terms like Blog, Wiki, Micro-blog. Why are there so many types and when do I use what?

One adviser starts to explain:

• a Blog is like a Diary entry, and you can invite others to comment on (the whole contents)
• a Wiki is like a common writing pad where several can write on the same space, not necessarily knowing who wrote what when
• a micro blog guy shoots in: “and you can use a micro blog also for questions or if you just want to tell your colleagues what you are currently working on…”

I’m still confused.

Then another adviser calmly says:

Don’t worry about these terms. You don’t need to learn them.  Just start writing in the collaborative space, and you will discover how these value-principles expressed here will start to work for you”.