How to make a Enterprise 2.0 platform that works

This was a panel discussion with two people who are implementing this technology now, and one analyst studying the market. I think Toby Redshaw, from Motorola, had the best anecdotal evidence of success with these products.

Toby Redshaw – corporate VP IDEAS Motorola
Oliver Young – Enterprise 2.0 researcher for Forrester Research
Mike Fratesi – Cisco’s unified communications group

Toby: it really does work. Whole company runs on Intranet 2.0 (75,000 users per day). Previously they had a very large knowledge management platform – very useful to the scientific users of the company. To this existing environment they added Wiki’s and Blogs. At this point they have 4400 Blogs & 4200 Wiki. They did not tell anyone, did not train anyone. Just gave people the opportunity to create and update data. Since these initial deployments they have implemented social tagging (folksonomy) through a product called Scuttle.

Started out very skeptical about folksonomy sees it as “Arlo Guthery doing IT”. He found that it does work – it lets people see new relationships, heat maps of what other people have done. They also are implementing Social Networking with a product called Visible Path.

Key to all of these is that the technology has to be so easy to use that the adoption curve is vertical. He does see an interesting usage curve – less often used the higher you go in the organization. This is good. Collaboration needs to happen at the worker level, not at the management level.

Oliver Young: bit of a dichotomy on the market. One set of people very excited about how to use this material. IT sees this as a big nightmare. Command and control mentality. Keeping a lot of the CIO’s up at night.

Among the companies taking a look at using these tools are in a experimental phase. Far less common to see a company turn on a dime and redo the way the whole company works.

Mike Fratesi from Cisco. Recently purchased WebEx. Trying to show the value of unified communication within a enterprise 2.0 environment. Seeing a ad-hoc growth of wiki’s and blogs. Now undertaking a multi million dollar project to re-architect the intranet incorporating presence, blogs, wiki’s, etc – with a collaborative model, not the classic command and control.

Question – 4400 blogs, 4200 wiki’s – that sounds like a mess. Who is deciding what to roll out, when to do them?

I own them, with a small team. It is run by a manager and 4 people. 250 knowledge champions around the company. They are selected by the group they are part of to be the wiki shepard of the knowledge. He basically ignores the people concerned about the possible bad content. You have to let it go. If you censor them, you will kill the whole project. You don’t beat the competition by having better buildings; you beat them by having better people. A smarter collaborative platform gives you the ability to jump ahead of the competition. If we play chess, but I get to make two moves to your one, no matter how good you are, I’ll win.

Question – Oliver, you talk to the security needs of the firms – how are companies reacting to this?

All security is paranoia. Most companies need to be prudent. It is absolutely true that these tools are making their way into your system. Asked companies about how many people are using blogs & wiki’s for business purposes? On average 20% - you need to have a code of conduct that addresses blogs, wiki’s etc. For $20 I can launch a wiki in Social Text, and IT will have no idea it exists. If you are not supplying these features, people will go elsewhere to develop them. Figure out what you are going to do with these tools, and help your employees.

Question – John Chambers is a big proponent of these tools. Can you talk to how this is working?

Mike: Senior support has been excellent and very helpful to implementing these changes.

Question – Generational, Old folks don’t get this?

Toby: build it as a platform, searchable across all environments, structured in the same way so you can move content from one area to another. You would think the old school pre web folks would not adopt this, but in fact they jumped right on board. They have the most to offer, it is easy to use, and it provides value. Pretty much even usage regardless of age, more about how close they are to the actual work.

Oliver: I see this as the ability to see it as useful, and the older users who are not tech savvy do not use the tool as much. The consumer numbers are 18-21 37% creating content, 41-50 12% creating content. This creates a learning curve.

Question – How are you seeing improvement?

Toby: It has become a virtual campus, where people meet and talk more often. Seeing less email and more alternative versions of communication. Believe that this results in a higher clock speed.

Oliver: Hard to measure. One example – created a database with standards we use, don’t use. Moved it to a wiki, no longer needed to have a 2 FTE dedicated to updating the product.

Toby: You can tell lots of stories about this. Look at the Sales Wiki’s. See how they have been able to update the presentation quicker. And so on, it is often anecdotal evidence not hard numbers.

Question: making it useful, making it searchable, tagging it – how did you help make that happen?

Toby: Only have 2600 users of the Scuttle. Simple one page description of how to do it. If you can’t explain it in one page, it is too complex. If you can’t feed the team on two pizza’s it is too large.

Question: Did you investigate reverse mentoring?
Toby: No, but I have heard of it happening. Nothing structured, nothing top down.

Question: Does this augment Project Management, or replace project management?

Oliver: it can be. Nothing replaces technology, they augment what is already in place.

Comment from the audience – ask if they are aware of and use these tools, invite them to groups for future work.

Oliver: Evangelists will find you.

Toby: We use open text live link. This works well with the Microsoft product line, so people “steal” from other projects, but it becomes a richer environment.

Mike: Needs to be an extensible environment.

Toby: IT for grownups is the way we handle the rogue sites. We give them both a carrot – cool tech inside, and a stick – you can’t do this.

Question: How has the culture changed?

Toby: One of my big goals is to turn Motorola into a unselfish group of people who team well. Why should I wait 3 days to get a email to get approval for something, when I can interrupt you now and get an okay? We changed the culture by creating carrots and sticks, and using them. “In order to change management, you have to CHANGE management. We let go 40% of the managers to get the remaining people aligned with the new culture. This happened as part of the work. Sr management is supposed to lead, the workers are the ones who need to collaborate. You need examples. Single best business process is the face to face conversation.

Oliver: there are a certain group of employees who will never change.

Question: Can you discuss some of the difficulties in rolling these out as pockets versus rolling it out as a platform?

Toby: I wish I could talk to that, but all we did was build a really good platform and then release it.