Category: Four pillars

A few days ago, I promised to share my thoughts about Facebook in the context of knowledge management in the enterprise. So here goes.

First off, some context. For many years people have not wanted to share their “little black books”, their contacts and addresses. For whatever reason, some people appeared to feel that they were defined by the raw data rather than the relationships. Sad but true. As a result, when the first Customer Exploitation Systems came to be implemented, there were salesmen in all walks of life who pushed back, who refused to share their contact network.

Similarly, for many years bosses have not wanted their staff to help out any of the boss’s peers. If you take a charitable view of this, you could call it a case of incentive misalignment. Sadder still, the commonest reason was pure selfishness, bordering on spite.

I could go on but won’t. The point I’m trying to make is that our generation has not always wanted to share, to collaborate. To learn and to teach.  This is not something I’m seeking to solve within this post. You can take a horse to water….

I am far more interested in environments full of people who want to share but can’t. I think that tools like Facebook can make an immense impact in such environments. Let me take three simple examples:

One, relationships. Facebook has a rich array of relationships, from Friend to Group Member to Network Member and even Cause Supporter, all the way to Event Participant. And they’re all non-hierarchical and nonexclusive. This is very powerful, since it mimics real-life relationships far better than organisation charts and hierarchies. Furthermore, it allows you to “subscribe” to your interests with reasonable precision.

Two, conversations. Facebook allows a wide range of conversation types, from Poke to Send Message to Write On Wall to Chuck Book to Hug to Give a Gift to Dedicate a Song. It also features a number of conversation styles, from text to video (and surely audio cannot be far behind) and a whole plethora of ways to attach stuff and comment on stuff, both bilaterally as well as multilaterally.  Again, this mimics organisational real life far more than the straitjackets of email-only deprivation zones.

Three, transactions. Every event in Facebook is a transaction, and every transaction you do in Facebook can be an event. A news feed is nothing more than a transaction ticker. You get status updates on a number of things as well. And notifications. The entire alert process is promising and more flexible than traditional enterprise approaches.

None of this is perfect, but there’s a good foundation. Relationship-Conversation-Transaction. Pretty much everything persistent. Pretty much everything archivable and retrievable. The beginnings of syndication and search functionality.

Now, before I meander into my next Facebook post (where I connect Facebook with Four Pillars) let me bring this Knowledge Management piece to a reasonably tidy end.

Facebook provides a good relationship-conversation-transaction base as foundation. It assists you in finding people and skill and expertise, in creating communities of interest, in subscribing to news and events, in supporting polls and questions and discussion boards. It also captures quite a lot of profiling and preference and behavioural information.

If I had something like Facebook functionality within an enterprise, I could do things like draw collaboratively-filtered lessons from watching the apps that people used. Why does person A have an app set that differs so widely from that of person B? What can I learn from that difference? What can person A and person B learn from that difference?

If I had something like Facebook functionality within an enterprise, I could do things like plot out the routes that real information took, subverting hierarchies and tunnelling under garden walls. I could see relationship maps and mash them up with, for example, age-in-firm, to help me select mentors and buddies and role models.

If I had something like Facebook functionality within an enterprise, I could do things like start with a view that all information is open, then begin to close some elements selectively for regulatory or confidentiality or safety reasons. Instead of today’s post EAI post DRM nightmare, where Sharing is a Miracle. Or a lie.

More later. Keep the comments flowing.

Just some of the stuff I’ve bookmarked over the years and never blogged about.

• If you think, like I used to, that everything’s an illusion, then go here.
• If you prefer to argue about angels dancing on the head of a pin, as I used to, then go here.
• If, on the other hand, your God is Clapton or Hendrix, as it was for me, then go here.

Just Sunday evening fun. Teaches me so much about Long Tail creativity.

Update: I’ve just been told that one of the links, the one to microscopic art, was inaccurate. It should now work.

Yesterday’s post on Facebook and the enterprise seems to have elicited quite a few comments, so I thought I’d carry on where I left off, catalysed by what you’ve had to say.

Tom Foremski raises the issue of Facebook’s addictiveness. I think this is really important.

What does this addictiveness represent? Ease of use? Simplicity and convenience? Value?

A quarter of a century ago, I remember when the first Trivial Pursuit games turned up in the UK from Canada. It seemed to me that everyone was playing it, rashes of TP were breaking out at work during lunch breaks and even at dinner parties. A while later, another rash broke out. This time it was Rubik’s Cube. In a weird kind of way the more recent “addictions” to Sudoku are clear parallels.

We’ve had addictions before, but our ability to embed them into our work-life balances was negligible. I guess one could argue that Rubik or Sudoku improved problem-solving skills, one could argue that Trivial Pursuit helped team-building, but that’s about it. Where does something like Facebook fit into this?

I think Facebook is different. A different form of addiction altogether. It’s more like Bloomberg Professional. Now my memory’s not that hot any more, but what I remember is that the Bloomberg Terminal and professional service were originally targeted at buy-side firms and the investment professionals they employed. That the original service included an almost-accidental feature, messaging, that really took off and later became the reason why people flocked to Bloomberg in those days. [Sean, help me out here, your memory’s better than mine….]

Bloomberg messaging was addictive. But whom was it addictive for? Buy-side firms. Staffed by people who might just have had a disproportionate interest in making money. These guys were not into wasting time, they were pretty much single-dimensional about work and work and oodles of dosh. And more oodles. So why would they go crazy about the “chat” facility?

Because they got Cluetrain, that markets are conversations. They got Doc’s Nigerian pastor, that relationships come first. They got the Middle Eastern souk approach and tied these things together: relationship before conversation before transaction.

I think Facebook is a bit like that. There’s something about it that mirrors the relationship-conversation-transaction structure, and that’s what makes it addictive.

A coda. I have a hunch that many of the firms that are “banning” Facebook are doing nothing of the sort. It’s probably happening by default. What is probably happening is this: Companies buy lists of sites to ban for a variety of reasons, covering stuff like pornography and illegal gambling and pump-and-dump sites and dating rooms and so on. Now this is a sensible thing to do. Provided.

Provided the lists make sense. Sometimes they don’t. And my guess is sometime recently, someone somewhere went and put Facebook on a banned list. The list was bought by hundreds of companies as part of their security and protection services. And overnight Facebook was banned. Without anyone actually taking a strategic decision. Or even a tactical one. The trouble with decisions like this is that the larger the company, the harder it is to overturn default decisions.

• Gambling On Net
• My Music Blog
• Body Piercing Blog notes
• Laptop TechNews
• Medical Tech News
• World Medical NewsBlog
• The Movies and DVD weblog
• US and World Music News
• Don’t smoke blog
• Famous stores of The Web
• My favorite Cartoons
• Realy Cool Movies
• Gambling last News
• Software newsmaker
• World travel on a palm
• Modern Cell phones Blog

You’d be surprised how often stuff like this happens.

More to come. Next I shall concentrate on Facebook and Knowledge Management.

Some Saturday evening strolling round the web, after spending the day out with the family.

If you haven’t seen the work of Chris Georgenes, do visit his portfolio site mudbubble. It’s a delight for anyone who enjoys watching what can be done with Flash. This particular short of Chris’s (then) 2-year old daughter singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is magical.

First, a piece of apocrypha:

A very long time ago. Two shoe salesmen make the long journey by boat from England to Africa. Coach. Very tired. And on the first night there, despite their tiredness, they both send urgent telegrams home. One says “Nobody wears shoes here. Catching next boat home.”. And the other says “Nobody wears shoes here. Please send reinforcements”.

Nobody wears shoes here. It’s all about perspective.

That’s the way I feel about Facebook in the enterprise. Every enterprise has a choice, to “catch the next boat home” or to “send reinforcements”. Depends on how you look at it. So here are some perspectives to help you. Mine, admittedly, but then you would expect that here, wouldn’t you?

Feel Like I’ve been here before And you know It makes me wonder What’s going on Under the ground

We have all been here before We have all been here before

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young : Deja Vu (David Crosby)

Perspective 1: We have all been here before

I remember a time, it must have been the early 1980s, when it was common to ban phones with direct dial facilities. Why? Because people might talk to their friends and family during work time. It took a while for firms to figure out that this was a stupid thing to do, but most carried on with a limited ban, usually on international direct dialling. That lasted a little longer. Then, by the early 1990s, when internet e-mail emerged, it too was banned. In fact there are stories about the banning of corporate e-mail as well, continuing into this century. Soon it was the turn of Instant Messaging to bear the wrath of Corporate Policy. Then came blogs and wikis and social software in general. Now it’s about social networking.

Since the year Dot, there have been organisational Grand Panjandrums seeking to stop people from “talking”. Because that’s what all this is. Conversation. Phones. E-mail. IM. Blogs. Wikis. Social networking. Conversations. That’s all.

Banning Facebook is the equivalent of banning coffee shops and water coolers and loos.

Knutr was exceptionally tall and strong, and the handsomest of men, all except for his nose, that was thin, high set, and rather hooked. He had a fair complexion none the less, and a fine, thick head of hair. His eyes were better than those of other men, both the more handsome and keener of sight.

Knytlinga Saga

Perspective 2: Playing King Canute is not a smart thing to do

Think about it. While we’ve had Flickr and YouTube and Netvibes, while we’ve had MySpace and Orkut and Bebo and CyWorld and whatever else, while we’ve had Plaxo and LinkedIn and XING, Second Life and World of Warcraft, this is the first time we’ve had quite such a hullabaloo about a social networking site. Surely that must tell us something?

Facebook is different. Especially for Generation M. [Or, if you prefer, Y].

Every day 100,000 people that we might want to hire sign up with Facebook. Soon they will be asking potential employers “What’s your Facebook policy?” and losing interest as we ruefully explain our troglodyteness.

This wave is not for turning back. So let’s ride it.

Nobody goes there any more. It’s too crowded.

Yogi Berra (1925- )

Perspective 3: Never drive dissent underground

It’s like having your teenaged children play at home. You know what they are doing. If you tell them to stop making a noise or kicking that ball, then they’re going to find somewhere else to play. Out of sight.

That’s what will happen if you drive Facebook out of the enterprise. They will go somewhere else. Some company else. So we should make the effort to encourage them to stay.

This is not about Enterprise Big Brother and spying on staff. It’s about common sense. The same reason companies have watercoolers and coffee drinking areas. Or cash dispensers. Or canteens. If you make it easier for people to go about their business, then they will produce higher quality work. Which brings me to my next point.

Ye shall know them by their fruits

Matthew 7:16

Perspective 4: Concentrate on outputs

When you stop people from using things like Facebook, you are spending time concentrating on inputs rather than outputs. We do not live in a clocking-in environment any more. We need to continue to empower people, ask them to take responsibility and accountability for what they do, and to incentivise them on their performance. We should care about what people do, I am not preaching abdication of accountability for actions. We should care about how people do things, to ensure that they do things the right way. I am not preaching an “end – justifies – the – means ” approach. But what I am saying is:

Results matter, not efforts.

In a hurricane, build windmills

Ancient Chinese proverb

Perspective 5: When you can’t beat them, join them

A few months before I started this blog, I said: I believe that it is only a matter of time before enterprise software consists of only four types of application: publishing, search, fulfilment and conversation. I called them Four Pillars. When I look at Facebook, I see Four Pillars in action. I see Syndication of Content. I see Search. I see Fulfilment. And I see Conversation.

Imagine coming in to work, booting up your laptop and being presented with something akin to Facebook. Where, immediately, you see a bunch of news events about things at work you are interested in. Where you have one inbox for your mail, covering text and audio and video forms. Where you sign up to meetings you are interested in going to. Where you sign up to professional communities you are interested in belonging to. Where you can tell people what you are doing, and poll people to ask them their opinion on things. Where you can share information about the things you are working on.

Imagine being able to receive repeat mails only from people you have linked to; imagine being able to block mails from people. Imagine being given information as to which colleagues are online when. Imagine being able to search across people and projects and products and meetings and groups and events and whatever. Imagine knowing who is part of what in a timely and transparent way.

Imagine people building applications that solve real business problems and making those applications available to you, but at a time and place of your choosing. Imagine being able to find out which of your friends are using a given application, imagine being able to ask them their opinion about the application.

Imagine being able to do all this in a simple and open and transparent and collaborative way.

If you take the right perspective, there’s a lot you can do in an enterprise setting with Facebook. Who knows, maybe we shall soon see IT departments with a Facebook applications team embedded in them…..

Let’s harness the power of social networking tools, make them work for us in the enterprise.

I shall write more on Facebook in the enterprise, because I want to stimulate the right debates. In the meantime, I’d like to make three quick points:

• Facebook is open, it is porous at the edges. Enterprises need to embrace porousness, need to connect with their customers and their partners and their supply chain.
• Facebook is open, yet it is as private as you want to make it. Thankfully, it starts with an open rather than closed approach, but you have adequate control as to who can see what. Enterprises need to understand and adopt this Start-open-then-only-close-what-you-must mindset. It is an essential ingredient of collaboration, a spirit that every enterprise needs to foster.
• Facebook is open, yet with persistent searchable retrievable information and conversation. Enterprises need to understand and embed themselves into this record-everything-archive-everything-search-everything-retrieve-everything mindset.

I don’t have stock in Facebook, never had any. I’ve met Mark Zuckerberg briefly in 2004, that’s all. I will admit to having one friend who works for Facebook, but he was doing something else when I first met him (working for Apple). So I have no axe to grind.

There will be other Facebooks. Maybe there will be some who are better. That is not the point. The point is that enterprises can obtain real value from Facebook. But not by banning Facebook. Of course people need to behave responsibly, focusing on the outputs they are incentivised to create; this they will do; we should not assume that irresponsible behaviour by a few justifies punishment of the many. [It was this logic that was applied for the banning of international direct dial phone calls. Companies tended to bar such calls on most phones because of misuse and abuse by a very small portion of staff].

More to follow. Comments welcome.