Larry Chiang character compasses and gets mentored. He helps you peek into some of the best business minds with the freshest thoughts. This latest guest-post is from Oliver Marks who talked to Chiang about enterprise and social media applications. Larry did not understand it well enough to regurgitate him (read “rip-off”) so he asked him to guest post.
Edited By Larry Chiang
By Oliver Marks
While the hilarious Dilbert cartoon above demonstrates an idiotic usage of a new technology by an individual, turn it on its head and imagine a smarter ‘boss’ being aware of where his staff are and dynamically signaling what they’re doing. That’s one of the values of designing a social business… surfacing awareness.
History of Work Collaboration.
The promise of web applications – the software that runs in your browser window and over the internet – of business value, agility, awareness, financial attractiveness are tempered by the intractable twin towers of security concerns and change management.
Work practices heavily influenced by generations of document, postal mail and telephone paradigms are starting to change, but until recently uptake has been informal and christened ‘shadow IT’ by those in organizations tasked with protecting company crown jewels behind firewalls.
Temporary Fixes.
This often ‘secret to IT’ ad hoc usage, usually at a departmental or divisional level, has typically been to fulfill an urgent need not met for line of business by relatively inflexible enterprise software.
As momentum builds and the business value of newer ways of working with web applications are realized, the intentional creation of dynamic and socially calibrated processes, culture associated systems are emerging with a goal of helping organizations improve value exchange among constituents.
Next Gen Collaboration.
This conscious social business design tackles formal usage at a larger, more formal scale than line of business ad hoc uptake to meet narrow needs and solves an increasing problem of sophisticated next generation departmental collaboration silos developing that, password protected, are even more intractable walled gardens than past generations to connect together.
Appeasing security concerns with sensible realistic planning, while addressing the reality that culture eats strategy for breakfast are the two potential momentum killers preventing the unlocking of the benefits of more formal greater usage.
Challenges to Collaboration.
Widespread cultural fear of change plus lack of understanding of the substantial productivity benefits of one-to-many collaboration (as opposed to endless one on one email re:loops) is the challenge. This is now starting to be resolved with a rapidly maturing technology landscape, and more importantly by substantial business entities such as my organization the Dachis Group, who are dedicated to working with business to tailor social business design which identifies and delivers real business value.
Business is ultimately all about building relationships, whether in person, between teams or with customers. Modern technologies are enabling the promise of massive increases in efficiency – the hard part is realizing the benefits at scale. The use methodologies being developed by the Dachis Group will scale to meet the needs of large organizations efficiently and deliver the business value being sought by forward thinking organizations.
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Oliver Marks is a partner at the Dachis Group, and is speaking at Enterprise 2.0 Conference in SF. He is also on the advisory board. He is also keynoting at the European Enterprise 2.0 Summit in Frankfurt in November and writes the widely read ZDNet Collaboration blog.
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 Larry’s mentor Mark McCormack wrote this in 1983. |
This post was edited by Larry Chiang. If he missed something, email larry @larrychiang dot com and include your cell in the subject line.
Larry Chiang is a one hit wonder in business, a high school hero college zero in sports and is illegitimately write a sequel to a book he didn’t write. But what is weird is that he has testified before Congress and the World Bank, and starred in a video game.
Read about the granular details in how stuff gets done in his Business Week column on “What They Don’t Teach You at Business School“. Text or call him during office hours 11:11am or 11:11pm PST +/-11 minutes at 650-283-8008.
Larry speaks on stuff they don't teach in B-school to help you get street smart in doing business. In college, he started a business that helps college students with their FICO score. He loves entrepreneurs, Ben and Jerry's ice cream and after parties. You can reach him at:
