Your headline, which seems to represent the conclusion of your poll, and the question you actually asked in the poll are not congruent.

While Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 are similar in concept they are not interchangeable. You cannot ask someone “Have Web 2.0 sites and tools (Twitter, Facebook, corporate Wikis, etc.) made your job better, worse, or have they had no impact?” and then claim that their responses reflect the impact of Enterprise 2.0 on their job.

Even though you seem to discredit the survey conducted by Hydrasight because it was was commissioned by OpenText, I think the results offer a more valid reflection of a more clear understanding of what Enterprise 2.0 is.

Enterprise 2.0 is not merely using Web 2.0 in the office. As a side note: frankly, I think you have given Web 2.0 short shrift as well. Your definition, as represented in your closing paragraphs, seems to be that Web 2.0 is social networking, and by extension your definition of Enterprise 2.0 is merely applying social networking to the workplace. Let’s call this the Howlett fallacy.

As I have said before, “Enterprise 2.0 is far more than creating communities; while the definition is still evolving, at its root Enterprise 2.0 conceptual and technological framework which provides agile and adaptable collaboration and information sharing combined with integration of enterprise data, presented to the user in one interface.

St. John's vs. Bethel

Saturday was Homecoming at St. John’s University, and it was a beautiful fall day–not in the crisp temperature, blue sky, autumn color way; rather it was gray, cold, and misting. But following the two days of solid rain that we had just endured, the sporadic drizzle was a welcome change.

St. John’s, in Collegeville, Minnesota, is the home of the Johnnies, the winningest football program in NCAA Division III, with a 560-224-24 record in 99 seasons. St. John’s is also the home of the winningest coach in the history of college football–at all levels–with a record of 466-125-11 record in 61 seasons, John Gagliardi. If I were a typical sports fan, these would be reason enough to cheer for the Johnnies. After all, it’s easy to cheer for a winner, isn’t it?

I have to admit that I admire John Gagliardi. Not only is his win-loss record the stuff of legend, so is his coaching style. A style called, “Winning With Nos.” No blocking sleds or dummies. No whistles. No tackling in practice. No calling him “Coach;” it’s John. No scholarships. The environment at St. John’s is described as fun with high expectations. There are also no cuts; anyone who wants to play football is allowed to. At home games the Johnnies will have nearly 160 players on the sidelines, out of a student body of roughly 2,000. Again, if I were a typical sports fan, having a legendary coach with legendary methods would be another reason to cheer for the Johnnies.

St. John’s also has an outstanding academic reputation. Eighty-six percent of all incoming freshman go on to graduate; contrast this with a typical university which will have a number around thirty or forty percent. Of football players the number is in the high nineties, and since there are no scholarships, these are true student-athletes. They are playing not because of some dream at a shot at a professional career; they are playing for the love of the game. Yet, again, if I were a typical sports fan, having a sterling academic reputation would be another reason to cheer for the Johnnies.

So, I have said that I am not a typical sports fan multiple times now. I don’t follow baseball, basketball, hockey, or any other sport at any level. I don’t follow professional football. I don’t follow big-time college football. I follow one team in one sport at one level: The St. John’s University Johnnies’ football in the NCAA Division III. And roughly ten weeks in the fall, I am almost obsessed with this one team, one sport, and one level.

Normally, I don’t spend time ruminating on the why of my peculiar behavior of not really liking sports yet being fanatical about the Johnnies, but somehow Saturday set me to pondering. Likely, it was one of those rare moments when a litany of seemingly unrelated things coalesced to form the crystal of insight.

As I already mentioned, the weather in Central Minnesota had been on the gray, wet side for the previous several days. We had been riding the final wave of summer until Thursday when we were struck with a torrent–nearly two inches of steady rain in less than twenty-four hours, followed by a Friday of steady, although less voluminous, additional rain. Saturday’s weather wasn’t awful, and it hinted at a respite.

Normally I am not one to be maudlin about the weather, and, while I was not literally weeping over the gray, I will admit that it really did cast a pall on my already down mood. While I am much better off than the, by some estimates, twenty percent of the US population that is un- or underemployed, I have been looking for a new position for nearly ten months. Working a job I frankly loath while searching for a position has been a draining experience. The leaden skies were heavy, but the prospect of a trip to a Johnnies game, regardless of weather, was a welcome diversion.

Clemens Stadium, where the Johnnies play their home games, is recognized as one the the dream destinations to watch football. In fact, in 1999 Sports Illustrated listed it as one of its top ten stadiums–quite a distinction for a Division III team. Part of the allure of the stadium is the large, festive crowd of loyal Johnnies followers, but for me the more important feature is the natural setting. The stadium is built into a horse-shaped hillside and is surrounded on three sides with a mixture of hardwoods and pine trees. In early October, the colors of the deciduous trees are spectacular. Even in the mist of Saturday, the colors were remarkable. When you walk through the gates and into the stadium the overall effect is of leaving one place and entering another, and on Saturday, the contrast of leaving the gray, muted every day and entering the autumnally hued holiday was particularly striking.

Again, Saturday was Homecoming, and while I didn’t attend St. John’s, the sense of community and festivity was indeed contagious. The stadium was filled with alumni and their families. Outside of football, St. John’s is known for its sense of community and the loyalty of the alumni, and luckily for our family this sense of community is extended to the general populace surrounding the campus. My sons are in the St. John’s Boys’ Choir, and we are members of the St. John’s Arboretum. Normally, I am not one for crowds, but the feel of the crowd Saturday was familial and comforting.

Coming into Saturday’s game, the Johnnies were ranked sixth in the nation and were facing the Bethel Royals from down the road in Arden Hills. In their last three meetings Bethel had come out on top–a fact I had conveniently forgotten until the pre-game announcer on the radio reminded me on the way to the game. I had known the game would be one of the toughest in the conference schedule, but I had not recognized the streak. The visitor bleachers on the far side of the field were full of the Bethel faithful, a reflection of the fact that they really had a chance to beat the Johnnies. There are some games that the Johnnies play that running the clock and keeping score seems like a formality, with the outcome a foregone conclusion, but this game was not to be one of these. This was going to be an exciting game.

And an exciting game it was. The Royals took the lead in the first quarter on a 52-yard flea flicker, and neither team scored again in the first half. Statistically, the two teams were virtually even. The Johnnies have a history of making terrific adjustments at half-time and coming out fast and hard in the third quarter, but that was not to be the case this day. It wasn’t until five seconds into the fourth quarter that either team scored, and this time it was again the Royals.

The Johnnies did not score until there were only 9:25 left in the game. With a touch down and an extra point, the Johnnies were still down by seven. It wasn’t until there were only 2:55 seconds left that any points were earned, and this time it was the Johnnies. The score was now 13-14; the extra point kick would tie the game.

Russel Gliadon’s kick went wide.

Trailing by one point with just over two minutes left in the game, the Johnnies kicked off to the Royals. The Johnnies defense was able to stop the Royals, who went three and out, punting the ball to the Johnnies, who took possession at their own 35-yard line. In nine plays, eating up all but five seconds, the Johnnies marched down to Bethel’s 32-yard line. And the clock was still running.

In the nearly three hours I had spent in the mist, in Clemen’ s Stadium, in the St. John’s community, watching the Johnnies play the Royals, I had not once thought about the world outside the confines of the tree-lined hills. I didn’t worry about my van that is sitting in the driveway and won’t start. I didn’t worry about the yard projects I need to finish before the snow starts falling. I didn’t worry about the pay reduction my employer gave me. I didn’t worry about my career. I didn’t worry about things greater or lesser than these.

And now the game was down to 32 and goal with two deep breaths remaining.

Having tried two unsuccessful deep passes, the Johnnies brought out Russel Gliadon, who had mere moments earlier missed an extra point attempt. It would be a 49-yard field goal attempt.

This, I am coming to find out, is the basis for my odd behavior of disliking sports in general, but being obsessed with Johnnies’ football: It is a game played not by journeyman professionals to feed their lavish lifestyle; it is a game played by average students for the love of the game and a chance to do something exceptional. It is being a part of something bigger than yourself–a chance to belong to community, both for the players and the fans. It is the chance to leave behind, if only for a moment, the world which we allow ourselves to be burdened with. It is the chance to cling to the hope which springs eternal in the human breast, manifest in an impossible field goal attempt by a future accountant, husband, dad, an average person called upon to an extraordinary thing.

The student section of the stadium were the first to charge onto the field. Is was a sea of Johnnie red spilling over the barricades. The announcers were screaming into the PA system that the game was not over yet; there were 2.8 seconds to go, and the Johnnies still had to kick off to the Royals. In the span of under two seconds, when Russel Gliadon kicked what is now a school record 49-yard field goal and placed himself among the immortals of the storied Johnnie football, in that flash of time, a mere blink, hope was rewarded, and all was good in the world.

From my perspective, however, I was struck by the business need that it is intended to address. i.e. breaking down the silos of data surrounding facilities management. The purpose of Site Hub is to gather data from disparate facilities management systems, combine this data with other resources–such as Google Maps–and present a more complete view of a facility or site. In essence it creates a data mashup.

Subsequent to our conversation, I have thought a bit about my previous post about business objects and how we need to modify our conceptualization of how we represent them. Site Hub seems to be a great stride toward creating a more complete representation of a facilities business object in that it is designed to pull data from disparate sources. In light of my pondering of Enterprise 2.0 lately–I need to stress that Lakesh and I did not talk about this, so it may already be possible–the most complete representation of the site in Site Hub would pull in the E2.0 data–discussions, rss, documents, etc.–that surrounds the site as well.

One thing that this discussion and post highlight for me is the business need. Both MDM and Enterprise 2.0 are trying to solve the same business need, i.e. getting all the data about a business object, regardless of source, and presenting it to the user in a way that represents the object in the most accurate light, while I would hazard that Enterprise 2.0 further enables interaction with the object.

• Autonomy is the urge to direct our own lives
• Mastery is the desire to get better and better at something that matters
• Purpose is the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves

Pink’s talk is intended to address what he sees as fundamental flaws in the current business operating system as he calls it. While Pink seems to be advocating a wholesale change in the way organizations look at incentives and motivation, I want to look only at the three intrinsic motivators as they apply to Enterprise 2.0.

Autonomy

As I have said before, many users are basing their expectations on what is technically possible in the workplace from their experience with Web 2.0 technologies. With Web 2.0 sites, users are able to:

• Control the layout of the pages they access, as with iGoogle
• Contribute to the content stream, as with Facebook, Twitter, et. al.
• Determine what content is important to them, as with RSS feeds
• Create content for distribution to others, as with blogs

Web 2.0 allows users to control both the content and the presentation of the information important to them. While the capabilities of that Web 2.0 technologies enable are ancillary to what the sites which implement them, the fact that the sites are so wildly popular point to the fact that they are fulfilling some user need.

Now, a user is unlikely to make a statement like, “You know what I like about iGoogle? It gives me a sense of autonomy, and I would really like to get this same sense of autonomy from the systems I use in the workplace.” May say something like, “You know I really like how I can set up a news feed from Boing Boing into my RSS reader. It would be nice to be able to set up a feed of all work orders with a Priority of 1.” The user, knowing that the rapidity in which a Priority 1 work order is a key performance indicator upon which they are evaluated, is expressing a desire to make an enhancement to their work process in order to directly impact their work performance. This user is expressing a desire for autonomy.

Mastery

One of the arguments for implementing Enterprise 2.0 technologies that I have heard revolves around the concept of capturing expert knowledge. The argument is framed around the fact that a substantial chunk–Babyboomers–of our workforce is facing retirement in the coming years. It is in the organization’s best interest to implement some mechanism to gather the knowledge this aging workforce possesses before they pack up their desks and walk out the door. From a motivation standpoint, implementing a KM system, or an ECM system, will allow users to not only capture their mastery of their subject matter, it will allow for the sharing of this mastery. Afterall, mastery without sharing is merely navel gazing.

One means I am using to locate masters of Enterprise 2.0 currently is Twitter and hash tags. By searching for #e20, for example, in the Twitter stream has exposed me to the innovators and thought leaders in Enterprise 2.0. Similarly, tag clouds on certain sites or within certain portal systems allow for identifying the masters–or subject matter experts–of organizational domains. While mastery is an intrinsic motivator, being recognized as a master is surely a motivator as well.

Purpose

While nothing occurs in a vacuum, it may oftentimes feel like our work does indeed occur in a vacuum–especially for those of us who work remotely. It is sometimes difficult to see the purpose of our work; we often lose sight of the “something” larger than ourselves which we are serving. This is where the community enabling features of Enterprise 2.0 come in. By being able to participate in the conversation surrounding our work, we gain that sense of being in service to something greater than ourselves.

In my above example of the Priority 1 work order, there is a organizational service level agreement that the work order must be completed within a certain time frame. This can be the carrot/stick motivator: you’re not penalized if the work order is completed on time, and you are disciplined if it isn’t. But what if the initiator of the work order was able to convey the “why” of the work order. That is, why is it so important that the work be completed within the timeframe. Let’s say it is in a lab conducting crucial work on the H1N1 vaccination? Couldn’t the discussion around this motivate?

Any thoughts?

I am still formulating thoughts around Dan’s ideas, but I wanted to post this as a sort of bookmark for myself.

I will admit that I was the victim of my own unreasonable expectation. Even though, as a technologist, I should have known better:

• I had never tested the calendar functionality other than giving it cursory glances
• I had previously experienced the poor G3 reception in the building in which the meeting was held
• I did not fully understand the way in which the iPhone calendar synchronizes a CalDav calendar

It was completely unreasonable for me to expect that I could authoritatively call into question the validity of the information based on my non-authoritative means of access to the information.

I think my experience last night has some implications on Enterprise 2.0, particularly in terms of user expectations. In previous blog entries, I have brought up the fact that users are becoming increasingly savvy about what capabilities of technology–especially Web 2.0. Users are asking tough questions, such as, “I can find out my order status for Amazon on my phone. Why can’t I find out the status of my purchase req.?” Granted the answer from an organizational compliance and security point of view is much more complex than from a consumer point of view, but it is a reasonable expectation, isn’t it?

If we imagine the hurdles of governance are surmounted, and we can implement Enterprise 2.0 enabling technologies, would it be reasonable to expect ubiquitous information access? My misunderstanding–or overestimation, rather–of the way iPhone and Google Calendar works points to only one of myriad pitfalls. While I think the iPhone UI gets it right mostly, we really are to the point where the technology is completely transparent. As in all other IT projects, Enterprise 2.0 efforts, especially mobile access, will still need to set user expectations appropriately.

I am especially appreciative of mrmerlot’s thought on SharePoint because they stem from formal training on the tool. My own experience with SharePoint has been  working with it as an external user of an instance which was deployed by a department without out IT approval or assistance. One of those stealth deployments.

In the case of the instance I worked with, SharePoint was chosen for the reason I think many organizations choose it: it is cheap and easy. The department had a need for some rudimentary document management, and SharePoint allowed them to quickly share and manage documents. It worked well for versioning and access control, but it quickly fell apart as this department started to allow external users.

Now, I will admit that the instance of SharePoint that I worked with was not implemented in accordance to best-practices–as far as I know. (In fact it may well have been.)–the impression that I was left with however was that it is fine for departments, but horrible for enterprise.

At this point, rather than continue with this post and verge toward anti-Microsoft zealotry. I would love to read responses to mrmerlot as to how SharePoint actually IS Enterprise 2.0.

Any nascent technological shift is going to be fraught with problems stemming from lack of a solid definition, and Enterprise 2.0 is still recent enough that the evolving definition causes problems for those who have not grasped the conceptual implications of it. Right now, and I think Howlett is guilty of this, the seemingly fallback definition is to equate Enterprise 2.0 with Web 2.0. In this definition, Enterprise 2.0 is only a application of Web 2.0 concepts to the enterprise. Howlett’s examples–forums at Western Digital, Ford’s internal business community, community within pharma–seem to bear this out. In this definition, Enterprise 2.0 is nothing more than enabling community within the enterprise. This is not an accurate conceptualization of what Enterprise 2.0 is. If it were merely applying social media within the context of a business, Howlett’s question about what problem is Entperprise 2.0 trying to solve would be difficult to answer in a way which would justify a large, organizational effort toward adoption.

Enteprise 2.0 is much more than merely enabling community; it has the potential to solve myriad business issues and provide an solid return on investment.

Beginning with the simplistic definition that Entperprise 2.0 equals Web 2.0, one can make the claim that, indeed, Enterprise 2.0 serves to enable user contributed content. Users are already contributing content to their organizations. This content takes many forms–from email, to departmental wikis, to SharePoint sites. There are plenty of examples of stealth, departmental projects where users have begun to implement Web 2.0 concepts to meet their operational needs. From an enterprise point of view, this is problematic on several levels. From an knowledge management perspective, this user-created sprawl causes difficulties in management valuable corporate information. From an IT perspective, this sprawl causes support difficulties. And, most important, from a corporate perspective this sprawl creates not only governance difficulties, but potential liabilities as well. Enterprise 2.0 is not merely allowing for user-contributed content; it is also enforcement of corporate governance on this content. Where Web 2.0 is bottom-up, Enterprise 2.0 is bottom-up AND top-down.

Enabling community and social media in a governed, corporate context is merely one of the business problems Enterprise 2.0 is trying to solve. Another is the capturing of organizational knowledge prior to the predicted mass retirement of the Baby Boom generation. While the statistics vary by industry, one anecdotal source–a company I presented at–stated that in the next ten years nearly sixty percent of their engineers would be retiring from the company. One of the challenges faced by this company was that these engineers had a substantial portion of their work stored in file cabinets and three-ring binders. The conversion of these documents to electronic format would not be considered an Enterprise 2.0 effort; however, getting at the information contained in these newly electronic documents would be. In this context, an Enterprise 2.0 effort would include the creation of a taxonomy to structure the documents, user-created tagging of relevent documents, discussions around the individual records, et. al.–all in support of capturing valuable information prior to the predicted mass retirement. Additionally, this information would be accessible in a manner the newest employees are used to working. While the previous problem Enterprise 2.0 attempts to solve–governance of user-created content–has a return-on-investment which can only be calculated based on a potential litigation, this problem–the capture of business critical information prior to the pending brain-drain–can be approximated based on the amount of time and effort an organization spends attempting to gather information which is not accessible electronically. This calculation only takes into consideration part of the issue and becomes much more significant when the possibility of information being completely lost once an employee is gone from the organization.

Another business issue Enterprise 2.0 addresses is the issue of organizational, information silos. The data silo has long been an issue with enterprises, and large systems, such as ERP, have gone a long way toward removing many of the silos, but they still remain. This is evidenced by the tools which are implemented to allow for viewing across organizational boundaries. I addressed this issue in an earlier blog post on business objects. In short, Enterprise 2.0 offers a means to be more agile and adaptable by accurately representing a business object and work on that object. Enterprise 2.0 provides the tools to view an object such as a purchase order in its complete context, from the data from the ERP system, to the original source of the purchase request, discussions around the order, et. al. The return on this can be calculated based on the efficiency gains garnered from improved processes.

Not only does the improved representation of business objects enable agility and adaptability in terms of business processes, it also enables a more streamlined user experience. Using Enterprise 2.0 technology, no longer does a user need to log in and out of multiple systems just to perform their job. The time saved by having a single point of business operations alone could provide an ROI to justify implementing Enterprise 2.0, but add the increase in user satisfaction and the gains are multiplied.

If the sole purpose of Enterprise 2.0 was to enable social networking in the business environment, then it would be difficult to come up with a compelling reason to implement it in the current economic environment. But this is a simplistic view of Enterprise 2.0. Enterprise 2.0 is far more than creating communities; while the definition is still evolving, at its root Enterprise 2.0 conceptual and technological framework which provides agile and adaptable collaboration and information sharing combined with integration of enterprise data, presented to the user in one interface. It’s a little more than a forum.

To avoid this pitfall, the author recommends not considering oneself to be an expert, rather one should be an entrepreneur. The advantage of being an entrepreneur is that by necessity an entrepreneur thinks in terms of outcomes and results. According to the author, entrepreneurs:

- root their thinking in real-life scenarios (as opposed to being just academic)
- entrepreneurs are risk-takers (risk-taking based on research and weighing things up as opposed to pure chance)
- entrepreneurs are innovators (sure they borrow, to a degree, from others, but they, also, come up with their own ideas that are unique and novel – and then act upon them quickly and effectively before others get a chance to).

While this post is written from a marketing practitioner’s perspective on social media, why couldn’t we all use this same advice within our own organziations to help foster Enterprise 2.0 adoption.

How could it hurt to root our thinking in real-life scenarios?

Why shouldn’t we be risk-takers–basing risks on research?

Why shouldn’t we innovate, borrowing where appropriate, forming unique and novel ideas, and acting upon them?

In the context of our meeting the story drove home an important point: based on demographic circumstances, different users have different expectations of collaborative technology. A newly minted lawyer, for example, may expect to be able to use their Blackberry to view and edit a document, while an engineer with 30 years of seniority may want to redline a drawing on paper and scan the document to a file system.

While a well implemented Enterprise 2.0 suite can gracefully enable users to work in the manner most effective for them and provide the proper level of governance, this story, if it is factual, hints at something I have been thinking about since graduate school. What does it mean to be literate within the context of exploding communication technology.

This thing that got me thinking about was a College Humor article, which used the acronym “TLDNR” to describe a movie. I had never seen this acronym before, and I had to look it up. I was a bit shocked to find that it means “Too long. Did not read.” It turns out that this acronym is used in response to particularly lengthy forum postings. Thinking back on my shock, initially I was taken aback by the fact that someone would be too lazy to read a posting and admit freely that they could not be bothered to finish reading it, but then I started to realize that this is really not so much an admission of laziness; rather it is an adaptive response to external stimuli.

The other day I read that approximately 40% of Twitter’s traffic is pointless blabber. This means the signal-to-noise ratio within twitter is 60% signal and 40% noise–and I am sure that ratio of signal to noise is actually lower when consideration is made for messages which are directly pertinent to a particular user. A quick perusal of the Internet in general would yield the same conclusion: there’s a lot of data out there, and an the consumer of the information  needs to know how to winnow signal out from noise. It seems TLDNR is one of the ways to facilitate the winnowing. It seems to serve as an acknowledgment of the data, while indicating that the likelihood of quality signal hiding in the noise did not justify the effort of decoding it. (Note: I am not giving laziness a pass, nor am I saying this is not necessarily a maladaptation.)

While a receiver just sort of ignoring something voluminous has the potential of degrading communication to the point of ineffectiveness, some senders have begun to recognize the importance of presenting information in a way conducive to quick, accurate, and powerful consumption. Specifically, I am thinking about Michael Anderson’s infographic resume. Anderson has been able to convey a career and a skill set in a way which can be easily understood–quickly. Granted Anderson is a graphic designer, and most people don’t have the skills required to be able to pull such communication off successfully, but it is a terrific example of increasing the signal-to-noise ratio.

One of my earlier blog posts, I described a former colleague’s idea for a management dashboard before the technology was really read to easily facilitate its development. The intent of the management dashboard is to provide an at-a-glance representation of the state of the organization. Reams of green bar paper would allow for a manager to flip through indexes, lists, queries, etc. and induce the general state of the organization, but to be honest, TLDNR.

In thinking about dashboards, we all ready have a sort of vernacular started. Think of the a gauge metaphor with green, yellow, and red zones indicating the status of certain key performance indicators in relation to a predefine range of values. I have a feeling though, that as users get more savvy about the need to help decode signal, they are going to begin demanding other visual metaphors. I see a future where certain information is rendered using a mediaglyph like those out of a Neal Stephenson novel. Until then though, we can probably expect a lot more TL/DNR.