Mostly… Let me explain.

There’s been some really inter­est­ing and some­time pas­sion­ate dis­cus­sion on the mat­ter of Enter­prise 2.0 imple­men­ta­tion in the real world that’s taken place in the Aus­tralian blo­gos­phere in the past few days.iStock_000002547111Small.jpg

First, my friend and col­league, Matthew Hodg­son raised some­thing of a chicken-​​egg ques­tion, ask­ing the clas­sic ques­tion from the great base­ball film, Field of Dreams, “if you build it, will they come?” He fol­lowed up that post with another, very aca­d­e­m­i­cally focussed piece on group dynamics.

Matthew adopts an approach crit­i­cal of the posi­tion of well-​​recognised Enter­prise 2.0 experts, Pro­fes­sor Andrew McAfee of Har­vard Busi­ness School, and my col­league, Dion Hinch­cliffe of Hinch­cliffe and Co., that the tools them­selves, inserted into the busi­ness equa­tion at the right place and time can in and of them­selves be the cat­a­lyst for organ­i­sa­tional change — empow­er­ing employ­ees, encour­ag­ing inno­va­tion, dri­ving organ­i­sa­tional change, diver­si­fy­ing opin­ion, open­ing chan­nels of col­lab­o­ra­tion and free­ing up knowl­edge all the way to the edge of the network.

He argues that essen­tially, due to cul­ture and group dynam­ics, it is less that the tools are the cat­a­lyst and more that the organ­i­sa­tion was already ready for a change.

Matthew’s posi­tion, argued in his posts and with me on Twit­ter, is that deep research into the organ­i­sa­tional cul­ture and group dynamic of the organ­i­sa­tion is nec­es­sary before being able to address needs in enter­prises with social com­put­ing tools. I cer­tainly don’t dis­agree with Matthew. I do how­ever, think he’s being a lit­tle pre­scrip­tive in his position.

I’ve seen, and am aware of many more cases where intro­duc­ing the right tool or right twist on work prac­tice at the right time cre­ated a flow-​​on effect of change for the bet­ter. It can look a lit­tle like magic when it hap­pens and is a beau­ti­ful thing.

That’s not to say you do no research. That would be fool­ish. But weeks and months of research can be reduced sig­nif­i­cantly if a lit­tle will­ing­ness to exper­i­ment and engage in some safe fail­ure and intrapre­neur­ship are possible.

Sec­ond, Stu­art French, blog­ging at Delta Knowl­edge looks at change in organ­i­sa­tional cul­ture as an effect of Enter­prise 2.0 adop­tion. Stu­art takes an inter­est­ing posi­tion that looks crit­i­cally at Matthew’s posi­tion as well as the more encour­ag­ing posi­tion adopted by Andrew McAfee and oth­ers. I very much like what he has to say — con­clud­ing that the cul­ture and the tools are essen­tially sym­bi­otic — tools affect cul­ture but equally, cul­ture can influ­ence tool choice and adop­tion. If the peo­ple and organ­i­sa­tion cul­ture and the tools are in the right place at the right time, very great things are pos­si­ble.

Last, James Robert­son from Step Two has a lash at real world approaches to Enter­prise 2.0. James’ posi­tion is a lot closer to mine than Matthew’s. There’s a bal­ance of have a go, busi­ness prag­ma­tism, good pre­lim­i­nary and in-​​project research and will­ing­ness to try and fail early and cheaply.

My posi­tion in all of this, which I will present at Edge of the Web later this week is this:

  1. Enter­prise 2.0 is about the tools least of all — it’s prin­ci­pally about peo­ple and organ­i­sa­tions, the cul­tures within and among them, and intro­duc­ing man­age­able change to those peo­ple, organ­i­sa­tions and cul­tures in sup­port of solv­ing real problems.
  2. Done right, intro­duc­ing Enter­prise 2.0 to your organ­i­sa­tion can be a mas­sive pos­i­tive step — but it must be done right. Suc­cess­ful imple­men­ta­tions are see­ing dra­matic shifts in abil­ity to locate exper­tise and infor­ma­tion, col­lab­o­rate, inno­vate and intro­duce lead­er­ship and man­age­ment change. The McK­in­sey Global Sur­vey released in July 2008 is a great resource on sta­tis­ti­cal data around this issue.
  3. You must do research to under­stand the organ­i­sa­tion and issues, but it’s also okay to do some exper­i­men­ta­tion — drop a wiki, a blog, some col­lab­o­ra­tion tools into a team or work unit or depart­ment and see how things go. Try it with a will­ing group of par­tic­i­pants. And be try­ing to solve a prob­lem and not just intro­duc­ing tools. Test it for a few weeks and keep going if it works.
  4. If it doesn’t work, fail early, often and cheaply — with all this exper­i­men­ta­tion, there’s some atten­dant risk. Be pre­pared to pull the plug as soon as your tests prove not to work. And make sure the client or busi­ness under­stands this.
  5. Do your home­work — look at smi­lar organ­i­sa­tions who have solved sim­i­lar issues. See what they did. Track down the peo­ple involved and talk to them! Read as much research as you can to see if your prob­lems, peo­ple and organ­i­sa­tion “feel” like some of the research. Try some­thing they did and go back to Step 2 (yes, this is a lit­tle humor­ous, but not entirely frivolous).
  6. Focus on suc­cess — con­sult­ing on Enter­prise 2.0 or deliv­er­ing to your own organ­i­sa­tion isn’t about hav­ing a play­ground to mess with the lat­est toys. It’s about deliv­er­ing real value and improve­ments to the organisation.