L'Institut Boostzone est un carrefour d'échanges construit autour des réseaux professionnels vivants et de ses implications sur le management

Managerialism, an old battle with many similarities with Network Centric Management today

You should read this article “Managerialism and the demise of the Big Three”

by Robert R Locke [Emeritus, University of Hawaii, USA and a specialist of the history of management sciences]. It was published in December 2009 in the real-world economics review, issue no. 51.

This article is relatively long and difficult to read. Too bad if you only read one screen page articles, you will miss it. Now; if you are interested in the history of management and in what kind of lessons history tells us today, it is a jewel.

Robert Locke has been writing extensively on management practices, namely comparing the US and Japanese management systems. This article summarizes his view on why the Big Three lost their battle against the Japanese because they were unable to apply the Japanese rigorous but specific production management techniques.

One of the main reasons is what Robert calls (and denounces) managerialism, i.e. the management by the hierarchy, and in particular by the class of “managers”, as opposed to the collective and community like management of Japanese companies. Now you know why I see this article as a jewel! A striking parallel can be done today with what will happen to those companies that will be able to switch to a more collaborative management and those who will stay with a hierarchical one.

When you read this article just put your brain in a parallel processing mode and while you read about the American and the Japanese organizations in the manufacturing industry, just think of the contemporary challenge we are facing if we accept that networks will drastically change our management models. You will see why the emergence of the multidivisional firm actually led to the possibility of managing large groups but also to the hubris of a few managers who saw their coordination role as the real core value of the group. I let you get glimpses of the analogies.

Locke insists on an old concept incredibly contemporary: the one of a culture of flows versus a culture of structures as elements of management (see page 31 32), an important point because today’s organization has to become nothing else than a series of flows and connections. It has to include some regulation and governance (as with the commons or as in any system with collective responsibilities) for these flows but this is exactly where managerialism failed and where the old hierarchical management might fail in the face of Network Centric Management.

He also looks at how change is made more complex when one cannot reduce the people’ status differences within the Firm, something not really new but so acute within communities (see page 36). New hierarchies have to appear, but they will be based on the quality of contribution and on the quality of individual’s skills, not on status nor on the quantity of contribution. Quality is at the core, as it was in quality management.

He also looks, among other examples, on how the cooperative behavior between suppliers and producers led to better cars (page 39) instead of a client/supplier relationship.

He reminds us that already in the early 70s (page 40 41) there was a very interesting conceptual movement towards considering successful organizations as those able to organize themselves like a natural living system with three basic principles: self organization, interdependence, diversity.

What I like in Locke’s approach, beside the fact that I have been working on these issues since the time of my thesis on Japanese Management, is that he reminds us of the necessity of the tools required for a successful collaboration. And the tools recalled here are not technologies, they are the very tools around the organization of work, see page 42 43, from Quality Control Circles to Takt time to Kanban, to JIT, etc. All these techniques were at the heart of the Japanese success. I think that we don’t have them all yet for Network Centric Management within the corporation even if we are approaching some of them (governance rules, moderation techniques, virtual/real interaction for problem solving, etc.)

The most striking exhibit in this article is the following one. Just replace TPS (Toyota Production System) with Network Centric Management and you will be surprised too. History really has lessons for us.

I let the conclusion of this post to Robert:” Was this management? Not in the Chandlerian sense or in the sense understood by purveyors of the “New Paradigm” in management education. But Management by Means produced much better results.”

Written by Dominique Turcq locke, managerialism, NCM Enterprise 2.0, Management, Uncategorized, WOW world of work No Comments »

Presence, the next life changer

When the Internet started in the 80’s, globalization was unheard of and those working in international organizations were not “connected” across frontiers and seas. Open questions - fewer at that time - were solved by asking nearby in the same office, floor, building or restaurant. Twenty years later, technology has made everything faster and everyone closer; to keep a business among the leaders, collaboration is a must, real time, across distance and frontiers.

Instant messaging (IM) arrived in the early 90’s as an engineer’s gadget, and was rapidly adopted as a business tool. Simple, practical, ergonomic, cheap, it allows us to see who is ‘on’ and pass short messages that don’t need the formality of an email nor the interruption of a phone call. You may use AIM, Google Talk, ICQ, Jabber, MSN Messenger, Office Live Messenger, Reuters Messaging, Sametime, Skype, Yahoo Messenger or many others including in-house versions, or a mix of those through aggregators such as Pidgin or Trillian. You will need to install the client and to ask your contacts to connect (except in some companies, where the directory is pre-declared in the IM server). It is easy to use, and carries very few constraints: no need to click/open/read/answer/proofread/send/archive, no need to search for a phone number in a directory, no need to stop everything else and concentrate, you have your contacts at your fingertips.

Here are some common pros and cons (randomly organized):

Presence everywhere

In 2005/2006, as IM reached maturity, security questions came to the foreground; they are now mostly under control thanks to awareness training (security risks mostly come with connecting to strangers), acceptable use policies (AUPs), and in-house IM servers with security features (encryption, authentication, DLP[i], etc…) where necessary.

More recently, most social networks (including in the in-company versions we categorize under the label Enterprise 2.0) have added an IM feature. You can also try Mobile IM (MIM) by installing the client on your Smartphone - a step beyond SMS and MMS which it is expected to replace in 2011[ii] - it is still a bit impractical and monopolistic, but expected to improve quickly.

In fact, the advent of social networking seems to have slowed the growth of IM as a standalone service for individual users. Not yet the case in corporations, though a trend to expect as Enterprise 2.0 platforms spread.

Changing group dynamics

Just like many other technology tools, IM makes collaboration practical and transversal to the organization (and as such, is somehow unsuitable for command & control organizations). It also carries more spontaneity than most other tech-tools, hence is seen as less mechanical, more ‘human’, strengthening ties. It usually denotes autonomous employees: an example I like is self-organizing support teams, who use IM to check who is on shift and hand over problems quickly to the right expert[iii]. It also allows questioning of a variety of sources at the same time, and is seen as a true power in troubleshooting problems.

Because it is easy, and because it can be kept short and simple, some users forget about meeting face to face IRL (in real life), even when sitting just a door away. And, just like for email, each has her/his own pace, and addicts run the risk of harassing more tentative users. Yet, advantages seem still more important than burdens - one of the testimonies I received was even more enthusiastic: “I can work without mail, I can’t live without IM”.

Tops collaboration tools

IM tops collaboration tools

Forrester recently ran a survey for information workers in the US[iv]: surprisingly, only 26% of ‘information workers’ use Instant Messaging - one would have expected more, as this kind of service is now mature. The other interesting finding is that Instant Messaging comes first  of all collaborative tools, followed by web conferencing (used by 24%), Team document-sharing site (19%), Social network sites (12%) and Videoconferencing (8%). It is definitely a main tool to facilitate the rise of corporate collaboration.

If your corporation is not yet there, should it go now? Probably yes, unless you are all in the same place, all time, with a super coffee machine, and don’t need any informal external stakeholder contact.

Since the application seems pretty mature, what’s next?

How will business IM morph?

• Presence everywhere, with Mobile IM. Mentioned above, this is seen as the replacement for SMS/MMS in the next few years, more or less connected with online platforms.
• Adding features. As a standalone tool, Skype seems today to be ahead with chatroom on demand, voice, video, video-conferencing, and any kind of mix you want. Plus clients for Smarphones. Neither yet screen or application sharing nor enterprise management support, but one can hope for it.
• Replacing phone. Skype has a phone-like set, and VoIP service and hardware providers (i.e. the whole telephone market) are all paying attention to this area … though not yet clear if it will lead to something
• Integrating in collaborative platforms. Already started, most social networking platforms, and especially in-company ones, now propose the same type of services, interconnected with many other collaborative tools.
• Geolocalization. Earlier this year I had the opportunity to see a demo of AkaAki[v], a mobile social networking service from Berlin. It adds geo-localization and diverse profile and history features, allowing people to meet when they roam nearby each other, whether they know themselves (it alerts you) or not (it compares profiles, common friends etc. to propose people you should meet, or you can search for someone you see around - and if she/he is registered, her/his profile will give you chat subjects…). It uses GPS, Bluetooth and antenna recognition to map Smartphones and proposes to their owners a view of the neighborhoods. Beyond the privacy debate it generated, and assuming necessary ethic and safeguards will be developed, the idea of geolocalization is quite appealing: imagine entering in a crowded meeting room and immediately having the exact list of participants, imagine in a conference checking who you can or should meet around you, imagine while travelling your Smartphone lets you know that several of your workmates or partners are around…
• Bridging/federation. No lead there, but a need : those users working with several tools still need an efficient , agnostic and user-friendly aggregator …
• Interactivity. Out of the Cloud comes … GoogleWave, beta launched a few weeks ago, aiming further at real time live collaboration, mixing presence, social networking, email, … and many other things. Google is playing an ambitious endeavor - betting users will understand the purpose of this crossbreed tool, and will like the practical use. In any case, we can be sure that this innovation will influence corporate collaboration behaviors and tools - continuing on web 2.0 startups fate since almost a decade now.

How would you like these tools to work, in the future?

Written by Cécile Demailly collaboration, Corporate, Enterprise 2.0, Instant Messaging, Presence Enterprise 2.0, Mobility, WOW world of work No Comments »

Future features of Corporate Social Media. What’s next?

Technology has progressed so much that it has lost its power towards the users. Today users of Social Media and collaborative tools don’t have to follow the “rule” of a given technology. They can more and more decide what features they want and how they want them to work. This was already valid when mobile phone users decided that SMS was a key feature (telecom companies had not planned for SMS to be an important communication tool!). It is valid today when users of Twitters decide that retweeting is a major usage, etc. But there is more than these ways of using some existing features and making them a major pattern of usage. Today the users, especially in the corporate world, can dictate what they want or not and the technology has to follow. The dictatorship of the programmer’s thinking on how to use a tool is over.

WHICH NEXT MORPHING?

The SMS case and the retweet case mentioned above are just easy examples. The usage of many tools is morphing fast. Let’s mention a few. Calling someone on the phone for a simple question that could be solved by IM or SMS has become intrusive. Using mail inside Social Networks replaces the usage of “classic” mail tools (although not yet within corporations, will it come?). Blogs are progressively becoming an anchor point toward which microblogging is pointing (not yet within corporations). Physical meetings are switching to virtual meetings and it becomes slowly (organizationally) incorrect to convene physically a meeting that could have been hold virtually. A static profile becomes progressively unacceptable and “friends” want to be informed of the changes of profiles, preferences etc; of their “friends” via regular updates as on all Social Networks; will this soon apply within industrial organizations when the word “friend” is replaced by the word “colleague”? Tags are evolving from being tags used by the publisher to qualify documents to tags used by the users for searching not only relevant information but also communities. Etc. examples are plenty.

However, do the users really know that well what they want? (Many will recognize here a classic question for marketing people and a classic topic for those interested in the wisdom of crowds). Probably not yet but it is certainly something coming up.

It is not obvious that users can predict the next morphing, it is however certain that tools designers cannot. The question then becomes for the designers how to remain alert and ready to modify the tools according to the next morphing of social media usage within corporation?

Lets try to identify a few fields where questions are already arising for the usage of social media within corporations. Here are my two cents on the issue of “courtesy governance”, qualification of information and dashboard. This list is just indicative and a deeper one will be elaborated at the upcoming workshop of the Boostzone Institute on the new collaborative usages in corporations.

FOR A “COURTESY GOVERNANCE” of Push and Pull

One of the many issues with current social media is that the notions of Pull and Push are not clear for senders and for receivers. The tools are not clear. The usage could be ambiguous. Twitter is a good example of a push media (that can be at least a distraction, at worst a nuisance, at best a valuable source of information) that has become also a pull media and even a sort of search engine (the ultimate pull).

However the question is not only on the tool’s functionality but on the way it is used, on the power both receivers and senders have on choosing what they want to send and receive. It is probably impossible to create a formal governance (although a few organizations are trying) but it is certainly possible to develop a courtesy governance (remember the time where it was important to explain that capital letters in mail were shouting). A push media can become intrusive, and not only Twitter but even RSS are hard to monitor by the users. How can one receiver user select among the messages coming from a blog or a twitter user according to his priorities and interest as a receiver at a given point of time? Today most of tools are still on a O/1 format: either you get everything or you get nothing. Very few tools allow a confrontation of priorities and interest. Some do, like a phone call when the number is displayed: the caller says to the receiver that he wants to talk and considers it as urgent and important. But if the receiver has a different point of view he can just skip the call. The same happens with mail where one can open, or not, or delay the opening of a mail or even hide the sender definitively by pushing the spam button. But even these rudimentary measures do not exist easily on other social media and we all for example have to read the boring and uninteresting tweets of people, or their blogs on which we have put an RSS, just because we consider that from time to time they have interesting things to say. I personally subscribed to a number of people I am interested to follow because I consider them as having things to say, but I have recently cut the link because I discovered they also have many things to say on which I am not interested at all. My arbitrage was towards losing information rather than losing time.

One can expect future tools to help chose, in a simple way, how to configure and constantly reconfigure the alerts one gets. The simplicity is essential since the priorities one has on what one receives can change according to the moment, the sender and the topic.

QUALIFIYING INFORMATION

The qualification of information/publication will become a must. But it is easier said than done. What is a qualification? One can say at least that a message can be urgent/ important/ urgent and important/ neutral i.e. informational only. And this is still very simplistic since it does not even include the topic to which the piece of information is related or the public/confidential dimension, the sender’s importance for the receiver, etc. But, anyway, the most important is that the sender’s choice does not necessarily correspond to the receiver’s choice for the same information (and the problem is compounded when an information goes to several receivers, like with a blog or a tweet where multiple receivers will have multiple opinions on the qualification of an information).

The risk of creating frustration is large, especially for time conscious people (what most working people are and what all supervisors are) as the diagram below shows. The difference of perception on the relevance of an information can lead to distrust, frustration, even anger because of the time loss, and at the end can often harm the credibility of the sender.

WHICH DASHBOARD FOR TOMORROW?

How to plan for tomorrow? Probably by starting to develop “relevance dashboards”. In other words, like what is done today with search engines, future dashboards of information will have to get intelligent and to filter information according to the receiver needs and not only to the sender’s indications. It will have to be a better combination of automatic pull (please Mr. aggregator search constantly for that very specific type of information and bring it up, this feature is quite advanced today but still lacks flexibility), of filters on received push (please Mr. Aggregator separate the wheat from the chaff; this feature is clearly in infancy), of an intelligent filtering system able to identify quickly my time available, my current priorities, my current interests… (This feature is not yet here, but is it that far?).

Other issues corporate as users may want to see included as soon as possible are elements of the interfaces between internal social media platforms and public social networks. For instance for importing data from LinkedIn of a new employee. Also, for checking on groups, opened on external platforms like LinkedIn but in a way limited to a number of employees (e.g. project group X of corporate Y) in order to make sure that, when an employee leaves the company, his access to the external group is cancelled (a tough challenge as one can predict, but an essential one if one wants to reduce the governance challenge of external groups of employees).

We will discuss these issues and others around the topic of corporate user’s choice within a round table of users and tool designers at our next Workshop of the Boostzone Institute on the new collaborative usages in Paris on September 18^th. For those not having the opportunity to come, comments are welcome on this blog and a summary will be published here after the workshop.

Written by Dominique Turcq corporate social media, corporate tools, features, future Enterprise 2.0, Management, WOW world of work No Comments »

A note to CEOs: WHY switching your organization toward interactive management? HOW?

French text under the English one

WHY? Three objectives.

Let’s take some distance with the Enterprise 2.0 concept and fashion and wonder what are the real reasons why a corporation should switch to an interactive management with all its cohort of implied pain and complexity (since this is a change issue and not a fun issue). It is not only because collaborative/ interactive management is on its way to become a sort of new normal for management, due in particular to the social evolution towards more connections and social networks. More deeply, the so what is simpler than that and more profound: the collaborative mode is an essential way to improve productivity, innovation and engagement. All the rest is accessories.

HOW? Two assets have to be built

Any strategy relies on the creation of competitive advantages. Two are emerging out of a well managed interactive management model.

The first one is an “Information asset” by which a corporation becomes able to better manage information than its competitors. It implies finding information, codifying it, qualifying it, distributing it, valorizing it, combining it, towards one of the objectives mentioned above. It implies publishing, tagging, distributing, debating, validating, all those things that work infinitely better within a collaborative culture.

The second one is a “Relational asset” by which individuals interact better with each other internally and externally. It implies social networks, intelligent directories, forums, internal and external communities, etc. In short all the structures and systems allowing individuals to co-labor together.

NOTHING REALLY NEW HERE

These three objectives and these two assets were here long before the Internet (1.0 or 2.0 or whatever) BUT the mass (of information or of contacts), the speed of mobilization (of information or contacts) and the drastic reduction in transaction costs (for accessing information or contacts) are such that a whole new way of building these assets and pursuing these objectives is now necessary. Tools are available and the nice thing here is that once one knows what one wants, the tools will follow, not the contrary. The slavery to the tools is over. It does not make change simpler since all these issues involve both choices and pain. One cannot pursue all objectives at once or build these assets in one day (even one year) and one cannot build these assets without pain, all changes are painful. But the rewards could be great IF the strategic intent is not lost and pursued relentlessly.

This is what is behind the Boostzone Institute base line: “Strategic Impact Through Connected People”.

VERSION FRANCAISE

Note aux PDG : Pourquoi faire passer votre organisation au management interactif? Comment ?

POURQUOI ? Trois objectifs

Si la mode du 2.0 et notamment de l’Entreprise 2.0 ou encore E2.0 (!) semble s’être installée, il convient de prendre un peu de distance et de s’interroger, simplement, sur les vraies raisons qui font qu’une entreprise devrait faire les efforts considérables de changement que le management réseau-centré / collaboratif/ interactif va apporter, car il s’agit d’un changement profond de son organisation, et donc d’un changement couteux et risqué. Ce n’est certainement pas parce que tout le monde y vient ou encore parce que le mode « réseau-social » va devenir le mode normal de travail. Mais simplement parce que le mode collaboratif va permettre de poursuivre mieux les trois objectifs fondamentaux de toute organisation qui sont nécessaires à sa survie: Productivité, Innovation, Engagement. Pratiquement tout le reste n’est que sous chapitre.

COMMENT ? Deux actifs à construire

Toute stratégie repose sur la construction d ‘avantages compétitifs. Deux avantages compétitifs vont émerger d’un management collaboratif bien mené :

La construction d’un « actif informationnel », c’est à dire la capacité à mieux gérer que la concurrence les informations, leur codification, leur qualification, leur circulation, leur transformation, leur utilisation vers l’un des trois objectifs ci dessus mentionnés. Cela implique la veille, le marquage d’une information, son partage, sa discussion, son évaluation, etc. tout un ensemble de choses qui se font infiniment mieux et plus vite dans une organisation collaborative.

La construction d’un « actif relationnel », c’est à dire la capacité à inciter les hommes à mieux interagir entre eux dans l’entreprise et avec le monde extérieur. Cela implique des annuaires sociaux, des forums, des communautés internes et externes, bref des structures et des façons de co-labeurer radicalement nouvelles.

RIEN DE NEUF MAIS TOUT EST NEUF

Rien de nouveau ici par rapport à l’organisation du XXième siècle SAUF que la masse (d’information ou de contacts), et la vitesse (de diffusion ou de mobilisation de contacts) ont augmenté ET sont désormais gérables à un coût de transaction ridiculement bas. Les outils sont disponibles. Toutefois ils ne serviront à rien si les objectifs prioritaires ne sont pas définis (on ne peut pas poursuivre de façon égale les trois objectifs à la fois) et si les actifs à construire ne le sont pas de façon méthodique (un actif ne se construit pas « tout seul »).

C’est ce qui est derrière la baseline de l’Institut Boostzone : Strategic Impact Through Connected People…

Dominique Turcq

Written by Dominique Turcq collaboration, collaborative management, communities, E2.0, enterprise2.0, interactive management, tools Enterprise 2.0, Management, WOW world of work, edito No Comments »

LANCEMENT DU SEMINAIRE BOOSTZONE

L’idée:

La société va profondément changer avec l’apparition des média sociaux, dont les réseaux sociaux ne sont que l’une des manifestations. La transparence des profils, des emplois, va s’accroître. L’organisation sera plus perméable et plus transversale. Les processus de décision, d’évaluation, de rémunération, de collaboration, d’innovation, etc. ne seront plus demain ce qu’ils furent hier.

Certes, mais ces éléments assez généraux sont mal connus, les conséquences pratiques notamment sur la gestion du capital humain sont floues. Que sera le travail en entreprise demain?

Le séminaire, en  travaillant sur des sous sujets de cet ensemble, a pour objectif de repérer les bonnes questions et de dégager des éléments de réponses ou, au moins, des directions de recherche.

Une fois par mois, Le Séminaire propose à des membres de l’Institut Boostzone, spécialistes ou praticiens de l’entreprise «connectée» de se retrouver pour avancer sur le sujet.

Le Séminaire a pour objectif d’identifier les bonnes questions, de les synthétiser, de faire apparaître des projets de recherche concrets. Ceux ci seront alors structurés et proposés pour évaluation au comité scientifique de Boostzone. Dans certains cas des budgets de recherche et des chercheurs seront mobilisés.

Le plan de l’année sera établie lors du premier séminaire. La liste — non exhaustive — des thèmes parmi lesquels il faudra choisir, figure ci dessous en annexe.

Qui peut participer?

Le séminaire est sur candidature acceptée. Il est réservé aux membres de l’Institut Boostzone. Les personnes intéressées doivent envoyer leur candidature à Dominique.turcq@boostzone.fr en précisant ce qu’ils viennent chercher, ce qu’ils pensent apporter à ce séminaire, les thèmes qui les intéressent le plus, leur engagement d’assister au plus grand nombre possible de séances.

La composition finale des participants sera déterminée dans l’objectif de diversifier au mieux les participants.

Le nombre de participants est limité à 15 personnes

Pour en savoir plus…

Written by Dominique Turcq capital humain, Formation, seminaire, worldofwork Enterprise 2.0, Events, Formation, Management, Personal Branding, WOW world of work No Comments »