i mean it.  i’m really fed up.

i can make bank transfers, and pay bills, and shop online from my cell phone.  why then can’t i access a file stored on a sharepoint installation from that same device?  why can’t i access the latest updates from members of my team on our project from an enterprise 2.0 solution?  why can’t i do it all pain free — just as i do my online banking (or my shopping at express)?  don’t tell me there are security concerns about accessing proprietary information outside of the corporate firewall.  i don’t want to hear it; it’s just an excuse.

i need knowledge when i need it — not where or when you want to allow me access to it.  i’m interfacing with clients all the time — hardly ever at my office — and i need to have the right information available to me so that i can help them make informed decisions.  i can’t be bothered to jump through hoops just to get that information.

i walk around with an iphone in my pocket all day, and i can hardly use it for more than pulling up a lightsaber, finding waldo, and making fart noises.  it’s unacceptable.

if you work in enterprise security, i’m holding you personally accountable.  for far too long you have lagged behind the curve when it comes to the rest of the technology world.

it’s time that you finally catch up.

i find email to be a burden to my work.

it’s the hammer in the tool box. the problem is, not every situation is a nail. sometimes you need a screwdriver, and other times you need a wrench. but we’re so dependent on email (i blame ms outlook for it) that we all try hammering in screws and bolts — even when we know it doesn’t work.

even though we have instant messaging, and even though we have enterprise 2.0 tools like wikis and blogs and more, we time and time again return to email.

i think part of the reason is because ms outlook isn’t a mail client anymore; it has become a platform. since people have it open all the time and communication is instant, we use it instead of IM. we send files using outlook instead of posting them to some other service (like sharepoint.. ugh). we schedule meetings through outlook. we look up phone numbers and office locations through outlook. we hold long conversations in outlook. we ask questions in outlook, and we distribute information in outlook.

how frustrating is it, knowing that the place where you keep answers to your questions about multivariate calculus modeling for enterprise decision support is the same place that you keep information about server downtime from the internal IT department and notes about leftover sandwiches from the breakfast meeting being in the kitchen on the 4th floor?  how can anyone find anything in that mess?  we waste more time cleaning, sorting, and deleting messages from our inboxes that have no business being there.  cleaning, sorting, and deleting messages just so that we can find what it is we’re actually looking for.

enterprise 2.0 systems need to be more than a collection of blogs, wikis, and other web 2.0 tools.  it seems to me the easiest way to push adoption is to provide not just the screwdriver, or the socket set (metric, please) — we need to provide the hammer.

we have to add messaging!  instant communication needs to be part of our e2.0 solutions.  we need to create an internal facebook, with messaging, chat, and status updates/content sharing (micro-blogging) all in the same platform.  we have to make it so that people can do their work — all their work — from within one internal platform.

all of our tools, hammers included, need to be in the same box.

image by syamastro, flickr artist

blog.  wiki.  ms excel file.  ms project plan.  ms sharepoint page.  basecamp project.

they’re all tools.  while people may prefer one tool over another, whichever tool it is will not take hold unless the culture there supports it.

i see a lot of proposed changes to current work streams and business processes fail because — even with support from leadership — the user base rejects those changes.  there could be a few reasons why:

• it’s not simple.  if the change is convoluted, adding extra steps to the workflow process or time to complete tasks, people are going to reject it – even if they agree in principle that the proposed new method is “right”
• they don’t understand it.  if you make a change that people don’t understand the reasoning behind, they will have a hard time accepting and implementing it.  #1 sign that you made boo-boos?  hearing employees say, “uh.. why are we doing this again?”
• it doesn’t fit.  if your changes contradict the way you do business, it’s only going to lead to confusion and frustration, and ultimately it will be abandoned.

if you’ve tried making changes to the way your team or organization does work in the past and failed, check the process again.  look at what you’re trying to do, and see what your people think about it.  when new tools don’t take hold, don’t discredit their use.

it’s the culture, stupid!

keep the tools and fix the culture.

image by oliver widder, creator of geek and poke

people don’t fully understand social media, and part of it is our own fault — the social media mavens.  i don’t think we do a well enough job of explaining it to everyone.

most people aren’t very fond of change, because change is unpredictable.  am i going to be better, or worse off?  will i be able to adapt?  can i make the necessary changes in me to succeed in this new environment?

the problem with social media, though, is that it’s really not a change from one thing to this other.  in the end, we’re all still communicating.  how we communicate — the tools we use — do (as everything) evolve over time, however.  but it’s certainly not anything to be frightened over.

we need to find better ways to communicate the benefits of social media to yesterday’s enterprise 1.0 stalwarts.  how do you get someone who is so loyal to the old way of doing things to change?

i think it’s in the metaphors.

drawing connections between perfectly understood and generally accepted metaphors with social media may be the key to forming a level of trust that will enable the “old dinosaurs” (who may very well be young guns who just refuse to change) to ease into a social media transition.  the very simple fact remains: many people don’t use it because they don’t understand it.  but what do people understand?

the news.

the news used to be, very long ago, a newspaper that you bought at a newsstand or had delivered to your house.  you’d keep it and read it the whole week until the next week’s edition when you bought the newest paper with the newest news.  but then, the radio came along.  radio and television changed the way that you got your news.  it wasn’t weekly anymore, it became nightly… and then twice daily.  with weather and traffic reports!  it didn’t take a whole week before you learned about what was going on in the world anymore.  but then, the internet came along.  the web again changed the way you got your news.  it’s not twice daily anymore — it’s any time you want.  news is reported as fast as it happens.

in the end it’s all news!  you find out what’s going on in the world around you; the only thing that’s changed is how you get the news.  flash forward from the days of big weekend newspapers and radio programs and into the world of the 1980s.  let’s talk portable music now..

years ago, if you wanted to listen to music, you would have to put a record on the record player in the living room or drop a cassette into the stereo system in your bedroom and enjoy while you sat there (or danced when no one was looking).  but then sony introduced its walkman player in ’79 and you could bring the tunes with you wherever you were.  out for a jog?  riding on the subway?  van halen was never too far out of your reach.  but then the CD player came along with a larger capacity, gave you the ability to skip tracks instead of fast forwarding, and allowed you to easily fit multiple albums in your backpack with the CD’s slimmer profile.  but then, the ipod was born.  now, we can not only skip songs but actively search for a specific song, and with large capacity memories can even store entire music libraries in your pocket.  you get the music you want, when you want it, at any time.

in the end it’s all music!  you play the air guitar, you tap your toes, and you sing along.

social media is the same as the news.  it’s the same as portable music.  we’re finding newer ways of communicating, collaborating, and building virtual relationships that translate into real world benefits.  when we talk about blogs, twitter, youtube, and wikis — what we’re really talking about is just an evolution in communication.  the same way the radio didn’t reinvent the news, and the cd player didn’t reinvent what music is — social media isn’t reinventing collaboration, it’s enhancing it.

this isn’t a poker game in the wild west.  you don’t need to guard your hand from the eyes of everyone else.  it only hurts your organization.

just because someone sent you an email, or someone told you in a conversation, or you saw it on the internet — that doesn’t mean that you’re the only one who will find value in that information as well.

in this knowledge based economy the world is growing into, organizations need to manage their information better.   knowledge management seeks to answer the questions of who has the information, who needs it, and how do you bring those people together.  that’s the premise behind enterprise 2.0: collaboration is key.

at other times, the value is simply in that someone knows that you know it.  if you need help in decomposing that sentence, just think of yourself as a project manager or task lead.  quite frankly, they probably don’t care about what information you have — but it’s important to managers to know that you at least have information.  it’s there.  it’s out in the open.  it’s available.

i’m not sure why it is, but — much like the card game at the local saloon in the wild west — there is a lot of information guarding that happens in organizations.  we get split from our main team into smaller project teams with a specific focus.  then, we put our heads down and start working, looking around to share information only when asked for it.  but when we do this, we’re leaving out the knowledge, expertise, experience, and diversity of thought and opinion of a large portion of our own team, and an even larger portion of our entire organization.

the person who may be able to help break open the case might not be on your immediate team; they could be halfway across the nation (or the world).  but you may never know, because you’ve been guarding your information from the eyes of anyone who hasn’t asked for it.

business isn’t a crazy game of poker; put your cards on the table.  why?  because it may just surprise you who has the winning hand.