Is anyone missing on the E20 boat ? -

There's a consensus on the fact any enterprise 2.0 project has to involve people from many fields in the company : HR, innovation, legal, IT, communication, even line managers and C-level people. Is anyone missing on this already well crowded boat ?

I got part of the answer by a line manager with whom I was talking about making people shared services, a few years ago. If I remember well the discussion went this way :

- So if your staff need information to get things done, since information is owned by other employees, the latter has to be accessible and available to share it, answer questions, narrate their experience...

- Don't you think it's time to change your point of view about that. They are here to do a job but also to contribute to the success of the company. Performanc is not about having many people doing their job, it's about having the whole organization working efficiently. People are one link on a chain but what counts for the company is the whole chain : having strong links is ok but useless if some others are weak or even broken.

- I know all that. I'm not the one you need to convince. You should talk with the finance or accounting guys...

- You know, I've allowed a budget. I spend it to hire and pay people...and then I have to account for it. If we consider "social" activities will take 10 or 20% of people's time I've to justify why my staff is actually only working 80% of the time. And if they participate in things with people from other business units, they'll use part of my budget to increase their performance while I won't be rewarded for that and, what's even worse, I'll have to explain why I don't make the most of my budget.

- I know that's an investment. But when it comes to fill data sheets that's not possible to put it in the "investment" cell. We also have techniques to split any cost within several departments or units for resources we share...but it only works for machines. I'll change my mind the day I'll be able to but 20% of my budget in the "shared resources" or "investment" cell and be accountable for only 80%. It's only about the way we turn reality into numbers and present them but as long as the way numbers have to be processed this way and not any other way...

- one of the hidden reason people may refuse change is because not of change but the consequence of change on indicators that are not supposed to be changed. In this case, indicators makes more sense than work and that's quite understandable.

- so, internal indicators have to be redesigned to fit the new expected way of doing things

- at a upper level, since many indicators have to comply with accounting rules that seem to be more taylored to help businesses to have the most flexible use of tangible goods than intangible ones, maybe a facelift is needed to urge businesses change the way we use them.

The fact is I seldom see finance people in such projets while they are those who can make line managers more comfortable with new ways of doing things by designing indicators that reflects what things have to be instead of what they used to be. What's even more worrying is that, a the state level, it seems to be a lack of awareness to adapt models and rules that are legacy of Taylor's world to the XXIth century.

I'm also curious to know how line managers at companies like Google are dealing with their famous "20%", if the fact that employees can use 20% of their time on personal projects than can be seen as investment changes anything on what managers are accountable for.

Anyway, I'd like to see more financial experts in the enterprise 2.0 discussion...sure they could facilitate change at their level.

Comments

Submitted by Bert Sandie August 09, 2010 - 11:25 PM

My 2 cents, perhaps we need to also consider:

(a) Add "sharing and collaboration" as part of the core values for companies
(b) Add "sharing" as part of a deliverable in development frameworks and processes
(c) Add "sharing" as a yearly objective for employees - be specific on what is shared, the value of what is being shared and then measure that this is completed

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Submitted by Rob Gray August 11, 2010 - 9:26 AM

Hi Bertrand - to answer your question about Google - the 20% time does not by default just "roll-up" to a line-manager's 20% objective. For example in a team of 5, each person could have their own 20% project, or they could all work on one project, each spending 20% of their time on that. The manager could also choose to spend 20% of her time on this project, or they could choose their own. Needless to say, if someone has a successful 20% project it will make their manager look good anyway (even if they are not actually involved) since the line manager would have supported their efforts, made sure that they had everything they needed in order to be successful...

but the manager is not made accountable for his staff's 20% projects... only accountable for making sure that they actually work on a 20% project. The staff themselves have an objective to have a project but they do not have to succeed... in fact failure is accepted, otherwise they are not innovating hard enough!

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Submitted by Bryant Duhon August 12, 2010 - 3:04 PM

Bert (and anyone),
I did an article on KM years ago, and part of the research for it brought up the need to measure knowledge sharing. The hard part is no one knows how to manage that. Do you measure an employee's expertise by adding up the number of "useful" or "like" comments from that employee's intranet commentary?

If someone's job is inherently based on working closely with others toward a common goal, can you measure how well the group shared by the end result of the project?

And how does an organization make it possible to share expertise? Status updates? Expert database?

Would love to hear from you and others about how you're measuring sharing and making that a measurable goal for employees tied to an org's overall strategy and objectives.

And Bertrand alludes to an even larger obstacle: accounting rules not designed to manage what goes on between our ears (I think that's what he's talking about, accounting does confuse me)

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Submitted by Bertrand Duperrin August 27, 2010 - 9:23 AM

Yes, that's it. The way we have to demonstrate how money is used and what is a "good" and a "bad" used was designed for the manufacturing industry, not for the knowledge economy.
Many things such as performance indicators and, consequently, the way people are managed, what makes them use their time for such purpose and not for another ensue from that?

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Submitted by Chris Walker October 19, 2010 - 11:50 AM

Knowledge management, like Rodney Dangerfield, gets no respect; worse, KM's not even funny.

What if we were to change the label to "transition planning" and start measuring performance based on that? What if, instead of measuring budget spend, we measured budget effectiveness? What if a portion of every annual budget were held back by "corporate" and allocated to transition planning and business continuity (achieves the goal of being responsible for 80% of your budget - actual %'s may change)?

Organizations spend a butt-load of money on transition planning and business continuity (I hope) but they always forget the most critical piece - the stuff that's in our ageing brains.

Bertrand - I'd also bring the "people" into the mix.

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