Pretzel Logic – Enterprise 2.0

As organizations begin to pick themselves up after the economic hammering they took in 2008-2009, there’s a choice to be made on how value is derived by the enterprise. Value in terms of internal efficiency, ecosystem growth, innovation, cost management, community contribution and customer centricity. Costs have been cut to the bone preparing for a near certain jobless recovery as organizations begin to shed off 24 months of paralytic business progress.

As we see momentum return, some organizations will put more muscle into older forms of governing in an attempt to do the same things, better. Others will start to become ‘builders’, as defined by Umair Haque in The Builders Manifesto – as a way to stand out in the market and to ultimately accelerate performance. During this transition, the essence of social computing / collaborative constructs and underlying technologies can play a significant role in executing that change – where change comes not only from the middle down or from the bottom up but from the core, out. That comes with executive buy in, cheerleading, leadership. but as important, participation in design and the ability to more seamlessly be engaged, downstream.

2010 likely won’t show trending data (or as Dennis Howlett says “2010 Prediction: nothing (much) will happen) but quietly, in the case of builders, traditional organizational structures where architecture happens on top and building is delegated down will begin to get re-casted into a model where participation in building happens on top as well. In turn, the rest of the organization is given the tools to play a role in architecting and design. Architecting and designing on how to engage with customers, optimize internal business processes, champion innovation and empower partners and suppliers.

Social computing constructs can drive a hole in that wall that separates strategy and execution – allowing managers to see, guide and participate in execution and follow through like never before. Those organizations looking to do more of what they did pre-crash will probably invest in more business intelligence (BI) and will no doubt end up with better reports. But like before, the insight will come when its too late to influence the outcome. Builders on the other hand will use, say, activity streams, real time in the flow notifications of critical triggers in the execution chain, or the “right time” herding of richer execution ideas and insight around process (examples highlighted in this post) to execute business strategy from opportunity definition all the way to the quarterly earnings call. Some of that efficiency in executing the best, most profitable ideas will come simply from increased/new forms of transparency for those organizations that welcome it and for others in the form of silo and org chart busting participation in strategy and follow though.

Social Computing as the Ultimate Building Enabler

One of the books that I’ve was very influenced by and one that guided a lot of my early approaches to accelerating performance was Execution – a set of compelling arguments around strategy and execution by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan. Amongst other things, Execution is defined as: 

• “The gap between what a companies leaders want to achieve and the ability of the organization to achieve it”; 
• “A discipline for meshing strategy with reality, aligning people with goals, and achieving the results promised";
• “A discipline requiring a comprehensive understanding of a business, its people and its environment.”

More recently, in the wake of the financial disasters of 2008 and the happenings (or lack there of) in Washington, Umair Haque penned an excellent post on Harvard Business Review about “The Builders Manifesto”, making the case that those sitting atop governments and enterprises need to be builders, not just charismatic direction setters. He distinguishes between leaders and builders, opining:

Here’s the problem in a nutshell. What leaders "lead" are yesterday’s organizations. But yesterday’s organizations — from carmakers, to investment banks, to the healthcare system, to the energy industry, to the Senate itself — are broken. Today’s biggest human challenge isn’t leading broken organizations slightly better. It’s building better organizations in the first place. It isn’t about leadership: it’s about "buildership", or what I often refer to as Constructivism.

Leadership is the art of becoming, well, a leader. Constructivism, in contrast, is the art of becoming a builder — of new institutions. Like artistic Constructivism rejected "art for art’s sake," so economic Constructivism rejects leadership for the organization’s sake — instead of for society’s.

Builders forge better building blocks to construct economies, polities, and societies. They’re the true prime movers, the fundamental causes of prosperity. They build the institutions that create new kinds of leaders — as well as managers, workers, and customers.

Shifting the Core

Execution, as defined in Charan and Bossidys book was about managers and leaders considering execution to be a critical part of strategy planning. The next decade will afford a design where strategy comes from the top (as it traditionally has) but also emerges from the front lines – from those that are closest to customers, distribution partners and suppliers day in and day out. This overly spicy title not withstanding, Dells success with generating $8+ million in revenue from Twitter (as laid out by Manish Mehta) is one example of this. Whilst generating ~.01 % of revenue from social media is hardly going to result in an emergency board meeting to shift Dells sales model, what it presents is a solid example of allowing microcosms to flourish from strategy to execution within pockets in the enterprise. Once tested for scale and relative return on investment compared to existing programs (say email newsletter marketing in this case), the dollars shift, moving these initiatives to the core of the enterprise.

Don’t construe this to be an implication that some big change in power structures in the enterprise is required or is coming anytime soon – accountability to stakeholders, and arguably credit for success, will remain and be owned at the top for the most part – that’s primal and mahogany row political science 101. However, smart leaders will realize that allowing microcosms’ to flourish from strategy to execution within pockets in the enterprise (as Dell did), will offer new (and more certain) opportunities to own performance acceleration success. And that may be the ultimate carrot.

Umair’s post had much to do with government as well as commercial institutions. On the government side, this likely will happen from the outside – instigated by the likes of Anil Dash and his efforts with Expert Labs. On the commercial side, business leaders have the opportunity to foster these internally – the personal incentive being owning the scaling and ultimate ownership of the success of these efforts toward performance acceleration.

There’s very little clarity or even awareness about social computing constructs as a key weapon in this transformative process, not to mention differing views on naming and definition as expressed in this post and comments on Professor Andrew McAfee’s Blog. However, the pieces are there and its up to us to weave that social fabric for enterprises we lead, work for, sell products to, and offer advice to, as they hit the reset button in preparation for the next decade.

It’s hard work but its this opportunity that gets me excited about 2010. So bring it.