Community

• Blogs
  • Expert Blogs
  • Community Blogs
  • Create a Blog Entry
• Discussions
  • Start a Discussion
• Job Center
• Chapters

“Social” Isn't Really Such a Big Deal

• 
• 
• 
• 

Transforming an enterprise towards becoming more social and collaborative isn't as radical as it might sound. Not if you just take a closer look at the kind of work that is the very basis of value creation today. This kind of work is becoming increasingly knowledge-intense, collaborative, project-driven, on-demand, community-based, distributed, virtual, complex, networked, and technology dependent. It sets new requirements for enterprises, ranging from how we design physical work environments and our communication infrastructure to how we organize and manage work and all the things involved in it.

One of the key requirements is that our work environments need to become more adaptive to the work we are doing, and who is doing it. Another one is that we it needs to make sharing and collaboration easy and happen across all structures.  Our structures should support work, not hinder it. We are frequently using analogies such as as "silos" and "stovepipes" to describe the kind of problems that occur when existing structures are restricting work instead of supporting it. 

Looking beyond the buzzwords and social media hype, what we need to do can be expressed as simple as this: We need to let work free. It is especially important for decision-makers to focus their efforts on removing the things that hinder work, and create environments where work is allowed to flow just the way it needs to. For every decision we make, or avoid making, we should ask ourselves: Does this make work easier, or does it hinder work?

We all know that it’s hard to make change happen, especially when it comes to changing shared attitudes and behaviors (i.e. culture). However, since work becomes increasingly dependent on technology, the least thing we should to avoid using technology to reinforce structures that prevent work. There must be an infrastructure that supports "fluid" work by decreasing or entirely avoiding the friction between these structures and work. If we do that, we can't blame technology for preventing work to flow. It becomes up to us to find the best ways to work.

Comments

Submitted by Martin Bartonitz January 18, 2011 - 6:24 AM

Good post and corresponds to a book I have just finshed:
"feel it! So viel Intuition verträgt Ihr Unternehmen" written in German (not yet translated yet, so the titel could be "Your enterprise tolerates so many inuition") and by Andreas Zeuch.
The complexity of our business results in not exactly knowing everything so our decisions have to be intuitiveley taken. The necessary knowledge is covered by the people doing the work not by the managers. So every software helping to spread information supports decision taking on all levels. And hierarchies can be reduced, because there is no more necessity to let information flow the structure top and down again.
Due to the complexity and the short time estimated behaviors is changing we do have not enough or to much information. So, why should we plan and analyse and produce wasted costs. Decide quick where the work is done. Tolerate failures and use them to optimize and inovate. Don´t use strong plans to legitimate you decision in case of failure. Use the intuitivity of your collective. Be agile in a positive social environment!
Wer mag, kann meinen Post dazu hier lesen: http://www.saperionblog.com/lang/de/agiles-geschaftsprozessmanagement-durch-intuitive-improvisation-a-la-scrum/3542

Report

Was this helpful? Yes No

Reply

Subject  

Comment  

This post and comment(s) reflect the personal perspectives of community members, and not necessarily those of their employers or of AIIM International