He sums up the dilemma currently facing organisations.

He suggests that work = fun when you are able to choose where, when and how to work and you have the right organisational structures and toolsets (mostly web 2.0 tools) in place to support that choice. And when you have challenging problems to solve and can work collaboratively with whoever you need to work with to get the job done, and share common goals and achievements.

The crucial point about this is that the new generation of workers (“net-geners”) coming through expect that type of working environment to be the norm. Organisations that don’t sit up and take notice of the needs of their future workforce, which have or are growing up with the web, are going to find challenging times ahead.

From the article:

It’s a case of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object. The net-geners arrive at work, eager to use their social networking tools to collaborate and create and contribute to the organisation. However, they are shocked to find technological tools more primitive than the ones used in school. The organisation still thinks the net is about websites presenting information, rather than a Web 2.0 collaboration platform. Then the organisation bans Facebook at the office because it suspects net-geners are chatting with friends and throwing digital snowballs when they should be working – thus depriving net-geners of their link to friends, to fun, to colleagues. Pretty soon, they head for the exit.

His article was inspiring.

And having now worked for several large companies, I’m becoming more convinced that many companies of a large size are just not shaped right when it comes to implementing web changes or responding to the challenges of a “web 2 world”.

I’m particularly referring to marketing and IT departments. And here’s why I think that.

IT

I maintain my dad’s website. Whenever he wants a change made to it – anything from creating a new page to editing a photo or pdf – he just sends me an email. One email. And I plan the change, implement it, test it and deploy it within a few days. He then takes a look at it and if its not right, I change it again until its what he wants. Short and simple.

I suggest it takes at least 10 times as long, 10 times as many emails (and number of people involved, conference calls, documents and meetings required) to get the equivalent change done in many large organisations, especially where IT is largely centralised.

Hardly “agile”. Not the most responsive. And totally wrong for our growing web 2.0 world where web changes have to be implemented quickly to retain competitive advantage, and are hard to define completely, in advance of starting to implement them.

No wonder business people continually complain about the time it takes to deliver online projects.

Yes, I appreciate the need for process, risk management, governance and so on but a total waterfall / PRINCE2-based approach to managing IT change just doesn’t work for the web. It really doesn’t.

I would agree it is necessary for big corporate system changes where the risks may be bigger and where requirements can be quite clearly defined up-front in order to help manage them, but its not right for web changes where changes are sometimes small, and often the ideal solution isn’t known until its seen.

Using this methodology for web changes, in my view, also stifles innovation. People just can’t be bothered navigating the Change Control process that is usually a part of it if they happen to come up with a better solution mid way through development.

The solution seems to me to be simple – adopt more agile and collaborative ways of working when it comes to doing the actual “from requirements to development” part of a web project.

Create smaller cross-functional, multi-skilled teams and empower them to deliver the best solution for the business. Remove as many layers of bureaucracy for them as possible and just let them get on with it.

What’s the worst that can happen? Create some / minimal controls to guard against this – but don’t go overboard. And clearly define the integration or hand off points where the code developed in the “agile” world needs to be passed back into the “waterfall” world to be tested and deployed on the corporate IT infrastructure.

Best of both worlds, perhaps? Combining speed and innovation with governance and risk management.

Marketing

The other day, when talking about his website, my dad happened to mention an enquiry he received through it from a new customer in Perth. He then went on casually to say that he put the customer in direct contact with his supplier in China so they could discuss the enquiry (about product spec) directly, and in more detail.

Customers / suppliers talking to each other. Without the organisation.

I thought about how difficult it would probably be to do that in many large organisations, and pondered why this was the case.

Now I’m definitely no expert in marketing but I think its because in typical large organisations, you probably have whole departments whose purpose is to manage the brand and  the messages around it. Its historical, from when messages could be controlled and sent one way only. The thought of customers and suppliers now talking about their products without their knowledge and therefore without being able to influence the discussion is probably quite worrying to them.

Not sure if this is something about a lack of trust (why do many organisations seem to naturally think that if given the chance, customers will say bad things about them??), but I doubt its sustainable in a social media world.

This is traditional marketing. Web 2-based marketing (also known as social media marketing) is multiway, participatory and user-generated. Its also loads cheaper and I suspect more insightful.

And I think its the future.

And totally not what many large marketing departments are probably about. They’ve got to change, to trust the conversations that will happen or are already happening and to become a part of them. There are loads of opportunities for customer insight, surely.

And it dawned on me that, unless I’ve missed something, the writers of Groundswell have made a bit of an assumption around customers and their use of web 2 tools.

Their book suggests that if you figure out who your target customers or users are, decide why you want to communicate with them (e.g. to get ideas from them for new products, to promote new services to them, etc), and then understand how these users make use of web 2.0 tools (ie. their “social technographic profiles”) – well then all you need to do is use these tools and magically customers will communicate with you.

Except that they probably won’t.

The piece that seems to be missing is what Clay Shirky talks about in Here Comes Everybody. Its something he calls “Promise”. Another way of thinking of it is the “what’s in it for me” factor.

For example, just because an organisation has identified its target users as being “critics” (in Groundswell’s  social techno profile) – due to the fact that they tend to rate products and comment on blogs – doesn’t mean they will do this on matters of interest to the organisation.

Forrester charges for access to its detailed information on social technographic profiles but I wonder whether the info considers this dimension – not so much exactly which groups use what web 2.0 tools but also what they talk about when using them. WHY they choose to use them. The “what’s in it for me” element.

Maybe I’ll find out by the end of the book.

Written by two Forrester analysts, it talks about the importance of organisations paying attention to what their customers are doing online.

They define groundswell as a social trend in which people use technologies to get the things from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations.

I’d add to this by saying its simply where people are freely having conversations online and sharing stuff with each other about loads of things including about organisations – but the organisations concerned are not part of these conversations.

And to unlock the business value they can gain from these conversations, they should be. Hence, organisations need to develop their social media strategies so that they can be.

People are using a raft of web 2.0 technologies to have these conversations and share information – everything from wikis to folksonomies to RSS feeds to social networking groups. And they are using these tools to say what they bloody-well want to. They don’t care about brand values, share prices, reputations, being sued and so on.

Here’s a great example.

Now, not surprisingly, the book talks about how Forrester has been asked by many organisations to help them develop their strategies for harnessing this sort of thing.

However, I’d say that developing your own strategy is not rocket science! Based on the book, here’s how I’d propose you did it:

1 – Start by understanding who your target audience / customers are (you should already know this).

2 – recognise the fact that they are most likely to be having conversations online without you and decide what you want to do about it. ie. do you want to listen / support / take part in / lead these conversations etc (Forrester calls these your web 2.0 business goals)

3 – research the types of web 2.0 tools they are using. For example are they creating Facebook groups, do they subscribe to RSS feeds, do they write / comment / read blogs, do they vote on product ratings, etc. Basically, where are they online?? And what are they doing??

4 – select the tools from step 3 your customers are using that will help you achieve your business goals in step 2

The book gives loads of examples of how to do this. e.g. There are thousands of groups on Facebook and myspace for MTV. If MTV wants to listen to the conversations their customers are having, they should at a very minimum observe these groups. If they want to take part, they should consider hosting a group.

But ignoring the conversations is probably not a wise option, as they will carry on happening regardless.

Web 2.0 truly puts power in the hands of customers – and organisations should pay attention. I can think of a few examples of web 2.0-friendly organisations that are already doing this. e.g. Amazon, Virgin Atlantic, Plusnet.

I wonder if McDonalds knows about this video …………

Thanks for reading this. I hope you found it of interest.

What do I define as a “web 2.0 friendly” organisation ?

Well, for starters it’s a place that values empowering staff to make their own decisions around how to do their jobs above enforcing tight controls, rules and security over what they can do. Naturally you need to consider these things – pity help the organisation who doesn’t have strong firewalls these days.

But it’s a place that tries to get the balance right to encourage staff loyalty and stimulate innovation while also managing business risks. A place that actively shows their staff that they both trust and value them whilst also having some safety nets in place if / when things go wrong.

A place that has a very flat structure and comprises self-organising ad hoc groups (rather than organisational divisions / depts) that form the way they think best around business opportunities and then disband when done.

Examples:

- a place that has blogs and wikis for knowledge sharing but minimal guidelines about usage beyond those needed to protect the organisation’s reputation and exposure to risk

- a place that lets employees make their own decisions about the tools they need in order to best do their jobs

- a place that is process-light and provides an environment to encourage doing over talking

- a place that lets employees create their own knowledge sharing structures, groups and systems, e.g. adopting folksonomies and social networking tools for business use

- a place that provides employees with access to a range of data sources and lets them make decisions on what to “mash”.

Wikis, blogs, communities of practice, instant messaging, flat structures, light processes, self-organising teams, hands-on approaches to getting things done, working when you need to  and where). All good stuff, conducive to getting the best out of people.

That’s my type of organisation.

So I thought I’d use this blog to jot down my thoughts as they develop and if anyone happens to read it, hope its been of interest to you. I guess there have been loads of books written on the subject by people who are much more authoritative on the area than me – if you know of any good ones, let me know!

Reading Wikipatterns recently, and Wikinomics before that, really set me thinking about the way businesses use web 2.0. (I’m taking baby steps at thinking this through so bear with me!) And having done the rounds of a few workplaces over the past year I’ve seen some interesting examples and reactions to the new technologies.

It made me realise that where web 2.0 is concerned there are (at least) three main types of organisations:

1 – those who treat their staff and customers as adults: they trust their staff and customers to use the tools sensibly, not to abuse them, and I guess they generally think positively when it comes to allowing their use. They might have company Facebook pages like this for their customers etc to join, virtual places in Second Life (like Michelin apparently do) for staff training, they probably have fairly unregulated internal wikis, unrestricted web access and maybe they allow staff to simply install the tools they need (IM, webmail, etc.) to do their jobs and have their own internal / external blogs if they want to.

I would imagine these places to be where you’d find things like the use of Agile methodologies (that welcome changes in requirements), family friendly policies that trust people to work when, where and how they do best, and flat org structures that encourage leaderless cross-functional teams to self-organise around problems. They trust their staff, they trust their customers – and I guess they trust in the quality of their brand.

These are probably the sorts of places that Generation X and their next lot are most likely to want to work in.

2 – those who treat their staff and customers like unpredictable teenagers – anxiously trusting them, only because they feel they need to, but being prepared should they misbehave (almost expecting them to) and hence having some controls and restrictions in place. They probably allow limited instant messaging use, allow web browsing (but restrict access to some sites, such as Facebook) and although they have an internal wiki, probably have loads of rules and guidelines for how they should be used.

With a bit of luck, and the right management, these orgs should hopefully turn into type 1′s as they build their trust.

3 – those who treat their staff as children who if given the chance to misbehave, will do. They almost certainly don’t have a wiki (what’s a wiki), don’t allow Instant Messaging outside the organisation, look nervously upon blogs, don’t understand RSS, mashups or social networks and don’t feel they need to.

They are probably very hierarchical, measure their staff on their inputs (working hours) rather than on their outputs and have lots of nervous IT managers trying to keep the lid on web 2 use.

I imagine that these will eventually die on the vine as generation X’ers and so on are probably unlikely to want to work for them.