Great post. I am in the process of integrating this discussion of culture interacting with tools in my thesis (since it first came out of thinking about what I was seeing in the data).

I have appreciated the back and forth over the last few weeks, especially with Matt, both on twitter and our blogs and I agree with most of his premises, especially that implementation of Enterprise 2.0 tools and methodologies in the wrong culture is doomed to failure…at the corporate level at least. It’s the over-riding view of culture as a single entity held or representative of the entire organisation that I tend to have a problem with because it leads to strategic decisions at an organisational level that don’t account for cultural anomalies within particular divisions or between the boundaries of the business and it’s supply chain partners.

Where those tools are used locally to determine which tools will best suit the preferences of the team in order to meet their business needs, then I am right behind them.

I’m seeing a lot of ‘push’ emerging within organisations towards collaboration tools, that wasn’t there to the same extent a few years ago.

Within my agency, eight groups have approached me over the last two months seeking tools to allow them to collaborate within the agency or with external parties more effectively. Notable, none of these groups were aware of the others – therefore there was no aggregate need (or business case or ROI) visible at senior levels.

All of these approaches are needs based – people are seeking better and more cost-effective ways to work together to achieve organisational objectives than via shared drives, emails, telephones and cross-country trips.

I can picture other organisations being in a same position – a number of groups in different areas are asking for ‘Enterprise 2.0′ tools, however without a central group able to capture and aggregate these needs, each is too small to provide the ROI needed for an organisational investment.

I recall a story I once heard regarding a large bank back in the early days of personal computing. They brought in someone to audit the use of computing technologies across middle management and discovered that hundreds of line managers had bought Mac personal computers because the Supercalc (spreadsheet) was so compellingly useful for them in their jobs.

These purchases were not authorised by the central mainframe computing department, rather were made out of petty cash as each manager could not demonstrate sufficient need individually to have the central department take notice.

Equally organisations now need to take a close look at their staff’s needs, begin experimenting with ‘Enterprise 2.0′ and formulate strategy, policies and business cases, using a centralised approach to provide ROI.

Otherwise staff will find what they need elsewhere.

It’s great to see more pragmatic discussions regarding enterprise 2.0. So many opportunities, but most will be squandered if we can’t get beyond idealism and hype…

Cheers, James

I would reframe “is necessary” to “will yield greater business intelligence on the direction of change strategies needed that, in turn, will increase the likelihood of success for the introduction of social computing tools in organisations”.

As you elloquently put it, “you must do research” and “do [your] homework” in order to deliver as good a ROI as strategically possible.

M

I actually spoke about this language gap at BarCamp earlier this year.

Don’t talk to the CEO with words like “Enterprise 2.0″ but with words like “business” and “culture” to achieve a more significant ROI.